"My dear Laura, your young head is filled with nothing but your dreams of music, I am afraid," said Mrs. Stewart, pulling out the sheet Laura asked for, and feeling inadequate to dealing with this strange little girl.
"I don't think I care much for anything else," said Laura, and Happie, who had joined them, frowned.
Mrs. Stewart shook her head. "There are other things, nevertheless. I knew some one once who was an extraordinary musician; I never heard any one else play as he played. Yet for the sake of his music he wrecked not only his life, but another life, and his one little child died for want of his care. Don't ever put your skill, not even your art, above love that makes the music of the world, Laura. It is a fearful thing to have made another suffer as this poor man made one suffer—and suffered himself, suffered himself, I am sure!" Mrs. Stewart said these words very low, as if she had forgotten her surroundings, the girls, even that she was speaking.
Then she aroused herself, and announced the lanciers, of which Laura played the opening bars.
Gretta had reversed the usual order of things by going to fetch Bob from the office to the tea room, whence they would all go home together.
Bob took Happie's arm as they started out and told her, with many chuckles, the compliments paid her by Mr. Felton's two elder clerks and how much they regretted that she had been but a substitute among them.
"For Hapsie is not harmed by taffy as Laura is," Bob thought admiringly.
Happie laughed, then she looked very sober. "I have real news for you," she said holding him back from the rest of the little band, though Margery and Penny were separated from them by Gretta, Laura and Polly. "Whom do you suppose the young man who boxed Dan Lipton's ears for me is?"
"The spirit of Perseus, or Launcelot, or some of those maiden rescuers," hazarded Bob.
"Not one bit!" cried Happie instantly. "He's a dragon that wants to devour the sweetest girl in the world, instead of being Perseus to save her. He is Robert Gaston." She nodded hard towards Margery to point her allusion to dragons.