"Oh, now!" cried Medora, fearful that another temper might respond.
"If you must bring in those old Greeks," Abner proceeded, "take their method and let the rest drop. All they knew, as I understand it, they learned from men and things close round them and from the nature in whose midst they lived. They didn't quote; they didn't range the world; they didn't go for sanction outside of themselves and their own environment."
"The Greeks didn't know so much," interjected Clytie.
"Oh, didn't they, though!" cried Adrian, sending a glance of thanks to counteract his contradiction. "They finished things. The temple wasn't complete till they had swept all the marble chips off the back stoop, and had kind of curry-combed down the front yard, and had——"
"'Sh,'sh!" said Medora. Abner looked about, more puzzled than offended. "Let's have some music, before our breasts get too savage," said the girl, starting up.
Bond followed with the rest. "I'll stick to my regular field," he said to
Clytie, as he thrust his crumpled-up manuscript into his pocket.
"Griffins, gorgons, hydras, chimeras dire,—but no more cows. I was never
meant for a veritist."
"Samson is pulling down the temple," observed Clytie. "Crash goes the first pillar. Who will be next?"
"He'll be caught in the wreck," said Bond, in a shattered voice. "Just watch and see."
XI
Medora, long before Abner had learned to work the pedals of the pianola and to wrench any expression from its stops, had banished most of her "rolls" from sight. "Siegfried's Funeral March" was unintelligible to him; the tawdry, meretricious Italian overtures filled him with disgust. In the end the two confined themselves to patriotic airs and old-time domestic ditties. Medora accompanied on her second-best violin (which was kept at the farm) and Abner enjoyed a heart-warming sense of doing his full share in "Tenting Tonight" or "Lily Dale." The girl's parents had advanced far beyond this stage, but willingly relapsed into it now and then for Auld Lang Syne.