"You must imagine that you have eaten of the good things of life until you are a little ill, so that good or bad taste very much alike. Then you come to me for the cure. I diet you with uninteresting things, which you do not like, and you imagine I am hard because I do not allow you to eat. Then one day I give you a little tea and toast. Now, Miss Leighton, you have worked to curve the third finger a trifle more than you did. Will you play that study of Chopin which you once performed to me."
Mabel had practised dry technique and had kept cheerfully away from all "pieces" as directed. She played the study.
"Bravo," said Mr. Green. It was his first encouragement.
"Why," said Mabel, "how nice it is to be able to play it like that."
"It is your tea and toast," said Mr. Green.
Into their hard-working life came delightfully Adelaide Maud. Their enthusiasm carried her into scenes she had never visited. She attended concerts in the shilling seats, and took tea once at an A.B.C. The shilling seats fascinated Adelaide Maud. The composite crowd of girls, with excited interest; of budding men musicians, groomed and ungroomed, the latter disporting hair which fell on the forehead in Beethoven negligence, the dark, lowering musician's scowl beneath--what pets they all were! Pets in the zoological sense some of them, but yet what pets! She caught the infection of their ardour when a great or a new performer appeared. Had any crowd ever paid such homage to one of her set, never! Fancy inflaming hearts to that extent. Adelaide Maud could feel her pulses responding.
"Oh," she said after one of these experiences when they were in Fuller's and ate extravagantly of walnut cream cake, "it's as much fun to me to go to these concerts, as it would be for you to--to.----" It dawned on her that any comparison might not be polite.
"To go to court," said Mabel.
"Oh, have you ever been presented?" asked Jean of Adelaide Maud.
Mabel stared at her. All their life they had followed Adelaide Maud's career, and Jean forgot that she had been presented. Adelaide Maud herself might have been a little hurt, but she was only amused.