“Easy for him,” muttered Peter bitterly. “Always does have an appointment outside the moment she begins.”
Tommy appeared to be throwing her very soul into the performance. Passers-by in Crane Court paused, regarded the first-floor windows of the publishing and editorial offices of Good Humour with troubled looks, then hurried on.
“She has—remarkably firm douch!” shouted the doctor into Peter’s ear. “Will see you—evening. Someting—say to you.”
The fat little doctor took his hat and departed. Tommy, ceasing suddenly, came over and seated herself on the arm of Peter’s chair.
“Feeling grumpy?” asked Tommy.
“It isn’t,” explained Peter, “that I mind the noise. I’d put up with that if I could see the good of it.”
“It’s going to help me to get a husband, dad. Seems to me an odd way of doing it; but Billy says so, and Billy knows all about everything.”
“I can’t understand you, a sensible girl, listening to such nonsense,” said Peter. “It’s that that troubles me.”
“Dad, where are your wits?” demanded Tommy. “Isn’t Billy acting like a brick? Why, he could go into Fleet Street to half a dozen other papers and make five hundred a year as advertising-agent—you know he could. But he doesn’t. He sticks to us. If my making myself ridiculous with that tin pot they persuaded him was a piano is going to please him, isn’t it common sense and sound business, to say nothing of good nature and gratitude, for me to do it? Dad, I’ve got a surprise for him. Listen.” And Tommy, springing from the arm of Peter’s chair, returned to the piano.
“What was it?” questioned Tommy, having finished. “Could you recognise it?”