Mr. Murdock coughed. “No, it’s pleasant enough.... Mr. Seton has been very kind to me.... I’ll be here another week or two installing the electrical equipment.”
Ellen raised her head proudly. “I’m going to New York myself soon ... probably this winter.... I’m going to study music.”
Mr. Murdock was very ready. “Well, we must meet again there.... It’s a lonely place for a girl without family or friends.”
“But I don’t get homesick,” said Ellen, with the sophisticated air of an experienced traveler. “I certainly wouldn’t be homesick in New York.”
From that moment Mr. Murdock began to regard her with a deeper interest. Perhaps he saw that by her side May had no points to be compared with Ellen’s air of quiet assurance, her youthful dignity, her curiously apparent respect for herself as an individual. She sat in the plush rocker within the glow from the bronze lamp. At the moment she was not awkward at all; she was tall, graceful, dark, even a little imposing. The essence of her individuality rose triumphant above the plush rocker, the engravings that hung against the elaborate wall paper, above even the cheap dress which concealed her young slenderness. She stirred the imagination. Certainly her face was interesting.
“I didn’t know,” began Mr. Murdock, “that you were a professional musician.... I don’t suppose you like playing ragtime.... Maybe you’d play me something good ... something classical, really good, I mean like Nevin or MacDowell.”
And Mr. Murdock, growing communicative, went on to say that his sister played too. She lived in Ogdensburg, New York. He had come from Ogdensburg to make his fortune in the city. That was the reason, he said, that he understood how lonely a person could be.
“Of course, it’s different now,” he continued, “I have lots of friends.... Homer Bunce and Herbert Wyck.... But you’ll meet them when you come to New York.”
He was very pleasant, Mr. Murdock. And he was nice looking in a rather spiritless way. His eyes were kind and his hands nice. To Ellen hands were important features. Shrewd beyond her years, she saw people by their hands and their mouths. Mr. Murdock’s mouth was a trifle small and compressed, but otherwise all right. He might be a prig, but underneath the priggishness there lay a character nice enough.
“And now won’t you play for me?” he persisted, “something of Nevin or MacDowell?”