"I must have put it in wrong," I said.
I wound the roll off, put it in again, and tried a second time, pedalling vigorously.
Dead silence….
Hush! A note … another silence … and then another note….
I pedalled through to the end. About five notes sounded.
"Celia," I said, "this is wonderful."
It really was wonderful. For the first time in its life my pianola refused to play "The Charge of the Uhlans." It had played it a hundred times before the War, but now—no!
We had to have a farewell piece. I put in a waltz, and it played it perfectly. Then we said good-bye to our pianola, feeling a reverence for it which we had never felt before.
* * * * *
You don't believe this? Yet you promised you would … and I still assure you that it is true. But I admit that the truth is sometimes hard to believe, and the first six persons to whom I told the story assured me frankly that I was a liar. If one is to be called a liar, one may as well make an effort to deserve the name. I made an effort, therefore, with the seventh person.