With her finger-tips already touching the ivory keys the Norse girl swung sharply around.
"What is that?" she demanded.
With a sudden impish conviction that Mrs. Tome Gallien, being already responsible for so many awkward situations in the world, might just as well now be responsible for everything, the Young Doctor gathered breath for his latest announcement.
"Mrs. Kendrue," he smiled with studied calm, "is the niece,— as it were, of the lady who gave me the piano." 105
"What," stammered both girls in a single breath.
But it was the little widow's turn this time to be the most dumfounded. "What," she repeated with a vague new sort of pain. "What? You mean that Mrs. Tome Gallien gave you the piano—when—when she knew how I had been longing for it all these months? Been haunting the warerooms day after day!" she explained plaintively over her black shoulder to the other girl. "Why—why do you love music so?" she demanded with sudden vehement passion of the Young Doctor. "Are you a real musician, I mean?"
"On the contrary," bowed the Young Doctor, "I am as tender- hearted about pianos as you are about ducks. Nothing under Heaven would induce me to lay my rough, desecrating hand upon a piano." In an impulse of common humanity he turned to allay the new bewilderment in Solvei Kjelland's face. "This allusion about ducks," he explained, "concerns another little idiosyncrasy of Mrs. Tome Gallien's."
"Yes!" quickened the little widow. "When she sent Doctor Kendrue this wonderful piano 106she sent me a—a dreadful duck blind—way down somewhere in South Carolina!"
"What is that?" puzzled Solvei Kjelland.
"Why a place to shoot!" snapped the Young Doctor. "Wild ducks, you know! 'Quack-Quack!' A—a sporting camp!" His whole face was suddenly alight.