A Nest of Linnets

by Frank Frankfort Moore

And Mr. Cumberland—— But then, Mr. Cumberland knew nothing whatever about the nature of men and women; he had taken the pains to prove this by the production of a dozen comedies—so that when he tried to wheedle her by obvious flatteries, she laughed in his face, and that annoyed Mr. Cumberland greatly; for he thought that laughter was always out of place except during the performance of one of his comedies, though people said that that was the only time when laughter was impossible.

Poor Tom Linley (the men who envied him alluded to him as poor Tom Linley) was having the finishing touch put to his education, all sensible people agreed. The wits said that he would learn more of what music meant by listening to Mrs. Abington’s voice, than he would by studying all the masters of harmony, from Palestrina to Handel.

Of course the scandal-mongers made a scandal out of this latest whim of Mrs. Abington, but the lovely lady was so well accustomed to be the centre of a cocoon of scandal (she had a good deal of the nature of the butterfly about her), she did not mind. She only wondered what Dick Sheridan thought of Tom Linley’s being the hero of so fascinating a scandal. She wondered how long it would be before Dick Sheridan would become jealous of the position to which his friend had been advanced. She judged of Dick Sheridan from her previous knowledge of him; but as the days went on, she began to feel that a change had come over him.

And then Mrs. Abington became a little reckless; for whenever she and Tom Linley were in the same room as Dick, her laugh was a little louder than usual and a good deal less melodious; and the way she allowed her eyes to rest on Tom’s face when she knew that Dick was looking, was rather too pictorial for everyday life, some people thought, and these were the people who said, “Poor Tom Linley!”

But there came a day when Tom Linley was announced to play at a concert. He was to take the violin part in a concerto, and to play in two duets with the harpsichord; but these selections had to be omitted from the programme, the fact being that Master Tom had that day gone a-driving into the country with Mrs. Abington.

It was a very pretty scene in high comedy, that in which the actress got the promise of the youth who had buried his heart in his violin, to fling his music-book to the unmelodious winds in order to take up the Book of Life and turn over its glowing pages with her. She had told him that she wished to take a drive into the country the next day, and had expressed the hope that he would act as her protector.

Of course he replied that it would be to him a trip to the Delectable Mountains to be by her side, or something to that effect; but he pointed playfully (now and again Tom could become playful, though never in the artless spirit of Mrs. Abington) at the bill of the concert in which his name figured.

What had the fact of his name being on the bill to do with the question of his coming with her? she inquired in a sweetly simple way, with artless open eyes.

“Good heavens, sweet lady, surely you must see that I cannot be at the concert and in your carriage at the same time?” he cried.

“Did I assert that you could?” she asked. “All I did was to ask you to be my protector to-morrow. I did not say a word about your going to the concert. What is the concert to me—to you or me, Tom?”