"I never thought the people in the next flat were lacking in squareness," observed Ralph, steadying Penny who lurched wildly as the train started. "Hold me around the knee, Pfennig; there's no use tumbling about until you've grown tall enough to reach the strap!"
"You know you might see little Serena Jones-Dexter," said Happie suddenly. She had evidently been following her own line of thought from a remark of Ralph's which had long been left behind in the course of the talk.
"Easy to see through you, Happie!" said Ralph. "You've been carrying on the story through several chapters, and you haven't decided whether you will let me—the hero—dash into the burning Jones-Dexter mansion and bear out the flower-like darling through the flames, or whether you'll inveigle me on the steam-boat from which Serena is to tumble overboard for me to rescue, or whether you will just get me down to the tea room when the old lady is expected, take me by my lily white hand and lead me up to that great aunt of mine—say, she is a great old aunt, isn't she?—and say: 'Mrs. Jones-Dexter, look on your long-lost, your beautiful boy!' That's the best way, Happie. None know me but to love me, you know, so it's all that's necessary, and it will save the wear and tear on little Serena."
"Ralph, you perfect goose!" exclaimed Happie, half laughing, half teased. For though she had not been entertaining such melodramatic schemes as Ralph attributed to her, she had been plotting how to work good to all concerned by bringing together Mrs. Jones-Dexter and her niece's family.
"I think the tea room is wonderful," said Gretta suddenly. "It is so interesting, as well as bringing in so much money. We had such music to-day, Ralph! You haven't told Ralph about that queer man and how he played."
"Hans Lieder," said Happie. "No, but we never could tell any one how he played! Ralph, it was wonderful. He is a man in a cloak and sombrero and he comes so much that we wish—or we did wish—he wouldn't. We were half afraid of him; we called him the Mystery, and we thought he looked like Mephistopheles. But to-day I talked to him a little while, and I thought he looked sad. He has always seemed interested in Laura's playing, and to-day he played for us. Ralph, you don't know how he plays! He's a great musician. I wish you could hear him."
Laura looked at Ralph very seriously. "I am going to write a song for him, words and all. It is going to be very beautiful,—sad, maybe, but beautiful," she said. "I am going to show how he came cloaked and shadowy, like the dawn, and how he burst forth, like the morning, with all the beauty, the music of the world. It will probably be my best song, for I would do anything to pay him for the way he played. I'm not afraid of him, like the girls, because I'm a musician too. Musicians and poets are never understood."
Laura looked at Ralph with a seriously uplifted expression on her pale little face, and Ralph looked down on her perplexed. She was such a funny contrast to the crowded aisle, the jarring car, even to her own thirteen years. Ralph never could manage to like Laura, nor be patient with her. He rightly thought that she shirked her share of the family burdens, yet, like Happie, who understood her better, he was sometimes impressed with the queer child's cleverness shining out through her conceit.
"Well, I think I'd go slow on writing songs to mysterious musicians in dramatic cloaks," Ralph advised Laura now. "What did you say the man's name was?"