Richard slapped his cap up and down on his knee. "I want to get to work."
"Why don't you?"
"What do you suppose my father and mother will say to my studying music?"
"The sooner you hear what they have to say the better for all of you. Your parents are persons of excellent common sense. And I have some news for you. Henry Faversham is to be in Baltimore for a few days before long."
Richard's head whirled.
"Do you suppose I could play for him there? Do you suppose he will ever take me as a pupil?"
"Certainly he will! I haven't spent all these years teaching you to have you refused by anybody."
"Suppose I did go, what should I prepare to play?" The unhappy look was gone from Richard's face. Thomasina had the gift of wings, no less than Basil Everman. Moreover, she lifted others out of fog-dimmed valleys up to mountain peaks. Richard's eyes shone, his cheeks glowed, ambition and aspiration now quickened by a new motive, took up their abode once more in his breast.
On his way home Mrs. Scott called to him from her porch. Impatiently he obeyed the summons. He did not like her, and had never disliked her so much as he did at this moment. She had many foolish questions to ask. What did he think of her friend Mr. Utterly? What did he suppose was Mr. Utterly's business with Eleanor Bent? She understood that he had spent an evening with her. The Bents were strange people, they behaved well, yet everything that one knew definitely about Mrs. Bent was that she was a hotel-keeper's daughter.
Richard said shortly in reply that he had had no conversation with Mr. Utterly and that he knew none of his business.