“How lovely of you, Mrs. Drayton!” exclaimed Marjorie, enthusiastically. “It will be just delightful to see that cunning thing off the stage!”
This bit of thoughtfulness was just like Mrs. Drayton.
“I have a little box of toys for him,” she went on, showing the corner of a white paper parcel under her long cloak. “We will take them in to him during the intermission. Where are your seats, Marjorie? Let me see your tickets. Oh, yes. Fortunately, they are near mine. You can get up and come out into the aisle when I do.”
In due course of the programme, the marvellous ten-year-old came forward to take his place at the piano, looking ludicrously tiny among the big German musicians. The grand piano seemed to swallow him up as he stood by it for a moment, bowing in a grave, self-possessed, yet childlike manner, in response to the applause that greeted him. He had a sweet, serene little face, with dark brown hair falling over his forehead. His broad lace collar made him look still younger than he really was.
He turned, after his bow, and climbed upon the piano-stool, settling himself with his small hands folded in his lap. Then he awaited the signal to begin, as composedly as if no large audience listened breathlessly for his first notes.
When the number was finished, he turned sidewise on the stool, and bowed to the audience, with his little feet swinging. At the renewed applause, he slipped down, bowing with a funny, quaint little gesture of his hands, and then turned and climbed to his perch again. Some one had started to lift him up, but he had put him aside with a dignified little motion. After the third number, his last in the first part, he slipped down again, made a hasty little bow, and scampered away like a flash, amid mingled laughter and applause.
At last came the intermission. Mrs. Drayton, followed by the girls, made her way to the dressing-room. She was well-known to the attendants, so she had no difficulty.
The Boy, the marvellous little musician, sat on the floor playing with a little train of cars that went choo-choo-ing over the carpet, propelled by steam made from real water in the tiny boiler.
“Look out for my cars there,” he exclaimed, with a funny, foreign accent, as his visitors entered, not even glancing up at them in his absorbed interest. The lad’s father stood by the door.
“Get up, my son, and greet these gracious ladies,” said the father, in German, as he turned and spoke to Mrs. Drayton, himself. The Boy got up lingeringly, with a most bored expression, but his face changed and brightened as he recognised his kind friend, with whom he felt quite well acquainted. He sprang forward quickly, and, throwing his arms about her neck, he kissed her repeatedly in his pretty, foreign fashion. The girls looked on, amazed enough that he proved to be just an ordinary, every-day little boy.