Meantime, though Rosemary had been a whole term at the college, her family had no means of judging her progress. She had diligently practised scales, exercises and arpeggios, but had steadfastly refused to sing any songs to them. Vainly they had begged for old favourites; she was obdurate to the point of obstinacy.
"Signor Arezzo doesn't want me to! I'm studying on his special method, and he's most particular about it. He keeps everybody at exercises for the first term. When I go back he says perhaps he'll let me have just one song."
"But surely it couldn't spoil your voice to sing 'My Happy Garden'?" demanded her father, much disappointed.
"He forbade it entirely!" declared Rosemary emphatically.
This new attitude of Rosemary's of hiding her light under a bushel was trying to Lorraine. She had been looking forward to showing off her clever musical sister to Morland. She had expected the two to become chums at once, but they did nothing of the sort. Rosemary treated Morland with the airy patronage that a girl, who has just begun to mix with older men, sometimes metes out to a boy of seventeen. She was not nearly as much impressed by his playing as Lorraine had anticipated.
"He ought to learn from Signor Rassuli!" she commented. "Nobody who hasn't studied on his method can possibly have a touch!"
"But Morland's exquisite touch is his great point!" persisted Lorraine indignantly.
"I can't stand the boy!" yawned Rosemary.
It is always most amazing, when we like a person exceedingly ourselves, to find that somebody else has formed a different opinion. With all his shortcomings, Lorraine appreciated Morland. He often missed his appointments, and was generally late for everything, but when he turned up he played her accompaniments as no one else ever played them. Moreover, he was a very pleasant companion, and full of fun in a mild artistic sort of fashion of his own. He was certainly one of the central figures in the beautiful, shiftless, Bohemian household on the hill. Lorraine had a sense that, when he went, the Castleton family would lose its corner stone. Yet some day he would be bound to go.
"I expect to be called up in March!" he announced one day.