“All our best schools are the convents, you know, for us girls. At Sacré-Cœur we have instruction from Signor Mancini. I have learned seventeen pieces, but May knows twenty-four and two duets.”
“Sonatas?” I say. “Concertos? Chopin? Beethoven?”
Miss Bruce shakes her head. “No,” she answers, with some pride. “Our music is all operatic. Of course, I can play ‘The Monastery Bells’ and ‘The Shepherd’s Dream;’ but now I’m learning ‘Il Trovatore.’ My sister can play a concert-piece upon ‘La Cenerentola.’”
“What else do you learn?”
“French—and dancing—and embroidery. But I suppose you are terribly learned,” and Miss Jeanie takes a wide and searching gaze of my poor countenance with her beautiful soft eyes.
“Not at all. I am a commercial traveller,” I say to justify my blushes. It was malicious of me; for she looks pained.
“Nearly all our young gen’lemen have got to go into business since the war. My cousin Bruce——”
(There was an inimitable condescension in her accent of the “our.”)
“The one who shot the other boy at school? Don’t you think you have too much of that kind of shooting?”
“As a gen’leman he had to do it—in self-defence. Of course, they were both very young gen’lemen. The other gen’leman had his revolver out first.”