“Somehow——” Mrs. Brandeis stared straight ahead, and you could almost hear that indomitable will of hers working, crashing over obstacles, plowing through difficulties. Theodore watched her, breathless, as though expecting an immediate solution. His mother's eyes met his own intent ones, and at that her mobile mouth quirked in a sudden smile. “You look as if you expected pearls to pop out of my mouth, son. And, by the way, if you're going to a concert this evening don't you think it would be a good idea to squander an hour on study this afternoon? You may be a musical prodigy, but geometry's geometry.”
“Oh, Mother! Please!”
“I want to talk to Mr. Schabelitz and Mr. Bauer, alone.” She patted his shoulder, and the last pat ended in a gentle push. “Run along.”
“I'll work, Mother. You know perfectly well I'll work.” But he looked so startlingly like his father as he said it that Mrs. Brandeis felt a clutching at her heart.
Theodore out of the way, they seemed to find very little to discuss, after all. Schabelitz was so quietly certain, Bauer so triumphantly proud.
Said Schabelitz, “Wolfsohn, of course, receives ten dollars a lesson ordinarily.”
“Ten dollars!”
“But a pupil like Theodore is in the nature of an investment,” Bauer hastened to explain. “An advertisement. After hearing him play, and after what Schabelitz here will have to say for him, Wolfsohn will certainly give Theodore lessons for nothing, or next to nothing. You remember”—proudly—“I offered to teach him without charge, but you would not have it.”
Schabelitz smote his friend sharply on the shoulder “The true musician! Oh, Bauer, Bauer! That you should bury yourself in this——”
But Bauer stopped him with a gesture. “Mrs. Brandeis is a busy woman. And as she says, this thing needs thinking over.”