"My! you have hands quite like a lady," said Peggy; and the cup of Nancy's bitterness was full. Nancy quickly changed the subject.
"Is it you who play the piano?" she asked.
"No, my brother. He works in a shipping office. But he is great on music."
At this point Anne-Marie's voice was heard from the adjoining room: "What is that piece that was lovely?"
Peggy laughed, but could not say which piece Anne-Marie meant. After a while she went to call her brother, who came in, lanky and diffident, and was introduced as "George." Anne-Marie kept calling from her room about the piece that was lovely, and finally the young man went back to his flat, leaving the doors open, and played all the pieces of his repertoire.
But "the piece that was lovely" was not among them. Peggy and Nancy said: "She probably dreamt it." But Anne-Marie cried "No, no, no!" at the first note of every piece that was started. At last she wept, and was naughty and rude, and the bear's hindlegs, which she had not yet eaten, were taken away from her.
Peggy and George were very friendly, and promised to call again. They lived alone. Their parents had a sheep ranch in Dakota.
"Rotten place," said George. "New York is good enough for me." And they shook hands and left.
After that, when Mr. Johnstone frightened Nancy more than usual, she knocked at the wall in Anne-Marie's room with a hair-brush, and Peggy came in, and spent a friendly evening with her. Sometimes George came, too, and read the magazine supplements of the Sunday papers aloud. George read all the poems.
"He's a great one for poetry," said his sister.