“Leave me alone, Peter,” urged Lillie, coaxingly; “I haven’t finished yet. I’ve just remembered the third verse.”
“No, you don’t,” returned Peter, with decision. “You’ve sung seventeen songs already; now it’s my turn.”
“Oh, do let Peter play for us,” put in Gretel, eagerly. “Dora says he plays so well, and I do love the piano so much.”
Lillie looked as if she would have liked to refuse, but she had been warned by her mother to “remember her manners,” and, moreover the grip on her braid assured her that Peter meant business, so, with a sigh of resignation, she vacated her seat on the piano stool, remarking as she did so:
“Oh, all right, of course, if you want to hear him, but he really can’t play worth a cent.”
“Can’t I, though?” shouted Peter defiantly. “Who says I can’t? Ain’t Father trying to get me into vaudeville to do my stunts? Just listen, and I’ll show you the noise it makes when a drunken man falls down-stairs.”
Gretel’s eyes were round with astonishment, but Lillie only shrugged her shoulders indifferently, and walking over to the other side of the room, proceeded to make herself acquainted with the contents of Mrs. Marsh’s workbasket. Peter seated himself on the piano stool, struck a few thundering chords and began what was considered by his family and friends his “very best stunt.”
What followed was so awful that Gretel could never think of it afterwards without a shudder. She bore it in silence for fully five minutes, while Peter endeavored to represent the different sounds supposed to be made by the unfortunate drunken man in his efforts to escape from a saloon, until the final catastrophe, when, having reached the top of a flight of stairs, he, in Peter’s own words, “took a header,” and plunged headlong from top to bottom. This Peter represented by a rapidly running scale from one end of the piano to the other, ending with a terrific crash, which brought Gretel to her feet with a cry of horror.
“Stop, oh, please, please stop,” she implored, seizing Peter’s uplifted arm just as it was about to descend upon the keys with another deafening crash; “it’s—it’s so dreadful!”
Peter’s arm dropped to his side, and he regarded his little hostess in amazement.