"You appear so sad, Mr. Downels, that I fear you are not enjoying our rehearsal," said Mora, ignoring the transaction in "niggahs," and turning with a questioning look to young Downels, who stood by her side yet, but seemingly lost in reverie since the music had ceased.
"Pardon the ungallantry, Miss Estill; but that song carried me back to the Hudson, and I almost fancied myself rambling over the hills and dales of my boyhood's home once again." But his sadness was seen to melt into an amused smile as Grace sang in a rich brogue:—
"Ould bachelor's hall—what a quare luking place it is!
Kape me from sich all the days of me loife;
Och! sure an' methinks what a burnin' disgrace it is,
Niver at all to be takin a woife.
Pots, dishes, and pans, and sich greasy commodities—
Ashes and tater-skins kiver the floor;
His cupboard's a store-house of comical oddities—
Things that were niver heard tell of before!"
Several glees followed; then Miss Estill took her place at the rich-toned piano, which was banked in a bed of wild-flowers, where the flame-colored blossoms of the desert-sage and the golden sunflowers were relieved by sprays of snow-powdered lace-plant and rose-colored convolvuli, mingled with tufts of white and purple mignonette, which grew in fragrant profusion over all the surrounding hills. As the grand strains of Schubert's "Serenade" floated out through the open windows, or reverberated along the arched and frescoed ceiling of the elegant apartment, the listeners preserved an appreciative silence,—all the more flattering when we remember that not a baker's dozen of the audience understood a word of German.
"It was all very fine and grand, no doubt, but still perfect Greek, or Dutch—which is about the same—to my poor, untutored ears," said Grace at the close of the celebrated song, as she turned to Rob and spoke in an undertone.
"Well, it was not all quite plain," returned that youth, with a droll grimace; "but it was certainly p-r-r-r-r-rrretty." Then, as Grace strangled and recovered from an effort at swallowing her own chin, he added facetiously: "Didn't you recognize the place where the old fellow shuffled out in his wooden shoes, and, after threatening the serenader with 'a schlock on the coop,' finally turned the bull-dog loose?"
"No, I just did nothing of the kind; and I don't believe you understood one word of that heathen gibberish either," said Grace, with a sniff of suspicion.
"Oh, that only shows you can't interpret operatic music," Rob replied, with a derisive grin.
"Rob Warlow, you horrible creature! I never know when you are in earnest," she retorted, with a puzzled look, as she smoothed down the fluffy ruffles of her white muslin gown.