"But how?"
"Marry me," said Seymour.
[CHAPTER VI]
Edith Arbuthnot had conceived the idea, an unhappy one as regards her family and neighbors, that every one who aspired to the name of Musician (it is not too much to assert that she did) should be able to play every instrument in the band. Just now she was learning the French horn and double-bass simultaneously. She kept her mind undistracted by the hideous noises she produced, and expected others to do so. Thus unless she was practising some instrument that required the exclusive use of the mouth, she would talk (and did so) while she learned.
Just now she was seated on the terrace wall at Winston, which was of a convenient height for playing the double-bass, which rested on the terrace below, and conversing at the top of her voice to Dodo who sat a yard or two away. These stentorian tones of course were necessary in order that she should be heard above the vibrating roar of the ill-played strings. She could not at present get much tone out of them; but for volume, it was as if all the bumblebees in the world were swarming in all the threshing-machines in the world, which were threshing everything else in the world.
"I used to think you were heartless, Dodo," she shouted; "but compared to Nadine you are a sickly sentimentalist."
When Dodo did not feel equal to shouting back, she spoke in dumb show. Now she concisely indicated "Rot" on her fingers.
"It isn't Rot," shouted Edith; "ah, what a wonderful thing a double-bass is: I shall write a Suite for the double-bass unaccompanied—I really mean it. If you seemed to me without a heart, Nadine would seem to have an organ which is all that a heart is not, very highly developed. Probably she inherited a tendency from you, and has developed and cultivated it. What do you say?"