'Oh, am I?'
Madame Frabelle nodded her head with a smile.
'Nothing on earth to do with it, my dear! The boy's a born composer all the same. With that face he must be a musician!'
'Really! Funny he hates it so,' said Bruce thoughtfully. 'But still, I have no doubt—'
'Believe me, you can't go by his not liking his lessons,' assured Madame
Frabelle, as she ate a muffin. 'That has nothing to do with it at all.
The young Mozart—'
'Mozart? I thought he played the piano when he was only three?'
'Handel, I mean—or was it Meyerbeer? At any rate you'll see I'm right.'
'You really think we ought to force him against his will to study music seriously, with the idea of his being a composer when he grows up, though he detests it?' asked his mother.
Madame Frabelle turned to Edith.
'Won't you feel proud when you see your son conducting his own opera, to the applause of thousands? Won't it be something to be the mother of the greatest English composer of the twentieth century?'