The little girl stirred uneasily in her chair.
"I don't think Miss Flowerdew has ever been to Chicago," she said.
There was a dead silence. The admirer of Miss Thyra Flowerdew looked much annoyed, and twiddled his watch chain. He had meant to say Philadelphia, but he did not think it necessary to own to his mistake.
"What impertinence!" said one of the ladies to Miss Blake. "What can she know about it? Is she not the young person who tuned the piano?"
"Perhaps she tunes Miss Thyra Flowerdew's piano!" suggested Miss Blake in a loud whisper.
"You are right, madam," said the little girl quietly. "I have often tuned Miss Flowerdew's piano."
There was another embarrassing silence, and then a lovely old lady, whom every one reverenced, came to the rescue.
"I think her playing is simply superb," she said. "Nothing that I ever hear satisfies me so entirely. She has all the tenderness of an angel's touch."
"Listening to her," said the Major, who had now recovered from his annoyance at being interrupted, "one becomes unconscious of her presence, for she is the music itself. And that is rare. It is but seldom nowadays that we are allowed to forget the personality of the player. And yet her personality is an unusual one; having once seen her, it would not be easy to forget her. I should recognize her anywhere."
As he spoke he glanced at the little tuner, and could not help admiring her dignified composure under circumstances which might have been distressing to any one; and when she rose with the others, he followed her, and said stiffly: