Madame Woleski was thin and dark, with an intense face and untidy hair, and long, nervous hands. She smiled at Caroline vaguely and sent her to play in the garden, while she talked with Cousin Penelope.
Caroline didn’t like the garden. She was afraid of hurting Jacqueline’s pretty clothes. But she found a clean bench where she could sit in safety, and then along came a great fluffy cat, the color of an orange, and he was friendly, after a condescending fashion, so she was able to get through the time until she was called into the house.
Madame Woleski wanted Caroline to play for her, and Caroline did so, quite simply. Mother had taught her long ago that when you were asked to play, you either declined with all courtesy, or you sat down and played. There was no excuse for shilly-shallying and waiting to be urged.
Caroline played, and Madame listened, and when the playing was over, a maid brought in a silver tea-service, and they had some crumbly dark fruit cookies, and fragrant strong tea, and tiny slim glasses of cordial. Caroline of course only had cookies. She said, no thanks! to the tea and the cordial, and Madame smiled at her, and offered her some crystallized fruit in a silver box.
“Next time you come, I have milk for you to drink, little one,” she said. “Because you come again. But before you come, you do every day two hours thees exercise.”
She went herself to the piano and showed what “thees exercise” should be, and she told Caroline she might come and play for her in the morning, three days later.
Then the call was ended, and Caroline and Cousin Penelope were rolling away in the limousine from the funny little house, while Madame Woleski, with the orange cat carelessly tucked under her arm, like a piece of fur, nodded them a good-by from her sunken doorstone.
“My dear!” said Cousin Penelope, with real enthusiasm. “Do you realize that you are now a pupil of Woleski’s?”
Caroline nodded solemnly. She was too happy to chatter as she had done on the way to the little house. But she was no happier than Cousin Penelope. For Penelope had loved her cousin, Jack Gildersleeve, and now she had his child, who in spite of everything was like her, here beside her in the car, and she was going to give her what her coarse and stupid Delane relatives, with all their wealth, had failed to give her—the music that she loved and craved!
So completely was Penelope carried away with her vision of Jacqueline some day a great musician, and turning to her—not to the Delanes!—for understanding and sympathy, that they had driven past the shops before she realized it. Then she smiled at her own preoccupation, and told Frank to turn back.