“How sweet of Priscilla!” cried Mrs. Caffyn. “Oh, Mr. Kelton, you will, I know, be pleased with Priscilla’s playing—Miss Wadhurst, you know,” she added in an explanatory tone.
Mr. Kelton pursed out his lips slightly, assuming the air of a man who is being bandaged by the people in the motor that has knocked him down—an air of aggrieved submission.
“An amateur?” he said. “I am not familiar with the name as a professional.”
“Oh, yes—strictly amateur,” replied Miss Caffyn, who played golf and other things, and so knew all about the distinctions between performers.
“I’m not accustomed to be accompanied by amateurs,” said the tenor, who was a bank clerk in the county town, “but I don’t mind giving her a trial. Where is she?”
He put on his pince-nez and looked patronizingly around.
“Here she comes,” said Rosa, beckoning to some one who was seated in the body of the school-house—a young woman with a good deal that might be called striking about her, besides her hair, which was rather marvellous, and made one think of a painter of the early Venetian school—there was too much of brown in it to allow of its ever being called golden, and too much of gold to admit of its being called coppery. People who knew where they stood compromised the matter by calling it marvellous. But whatever it was it suited her, though a girl or two had said positively that Priscilla Wadhurst would be nothing without her hair. They were wrong: she would still have been Priscilla—with a difference.
“It is so sweet of you, Priscilla,” began Mrs Caffyn.
“Oh, no,” said Priscilla; “I am not good enough—not nearly good enough.”
She cast down her eyes for a tremulous moment, and then raised them coyly to Mr. Kelton’s face; and she saw by the way he looked at her that he thought she would do.