"No, it isn't of the slightest use. We've wasted time now,—the time we ought to be trying this nocturne; and, if you please, Master Jimmy," and Dolly bowed, with a patronizing air, "we'll begin to play, or we sha'n't get through before Hope comes in."
Jimmy stared again. He was seeing Dolly in a new phase. Instead of flying into a passion, instead of turning upon him with tears and reproaches, she stood her ground with a semblance of cool superiority that astonished him. What did it mean? Was she getting so spoiled and puffed up by her vanity that the truths he had placed before her went for nothing against the flattery that she provoked? He knew that Dolly was not very finely sensitive, was what he called "dense;" but he had never thought that her good sense could be obscured by this density to the extent of making her positively impervious to criticism, as she seemed to be now. But such really was the fact. Not finely sensitive at the start, as I have endeavored to show, Dolly was full of self-confidence, and also full of animal spirits. With such a combination of qualities, it was not strange that she should be convinced that her own way was the only right way, and when led by her vanity through a little additional flattery, this conviction became so strong that no amount of criticism or opposition could move her. It would be only through some individual experience, some suffering in connection with this experience of having her own way, that Dolly would be likely to have her eyes opened to her own mistakes, and be able to see where she had blundered and what her blunders meant to others, as well as herself. Fresh, however, from what she thought her success of the night before, even Jimmy's words of protest, which usually moved her either to anger or tears, had no effect upon her. For the time she felt herself vastly superior to Jimmy in years and judgment, and from this standpoint she had met his criticism with a calmness that he could not at first understand. Of course this assumption of superiority was not a little irritating to Jimmy, modest though he was; and as he sat there playing the accompaniment to the nocturne, and pausing at almost every bar to correct Dolly's false notes, he was also pondering over her false notes in more important directions, and puzzling himself with suppositions as to her present attitude.
They were in the last passages of the piece, and Dolly was listening to his corrections in an absent-minded way that exasperated him, when the door opened, and there was Hope, with her violin, followed by Myra Donaldson, who was to play her accompaniment. Dolly did not wait to finish the bar she was scraping at, but jumped up at sight of Hope, with a "Oh, there you are, and you've got that dear little violin. Isn't it a beauty, Jimmy? See here!" and with one of her quick, confident movements, she took the instrument—one could almost say she snatched it—from Hope's hands, and held it out to her cousin, pointing to the shape and the beautiful red coloring with its dark veining, repeating, as she did so,—
"See! isn't it beautiful?"
She was turning it over, when Jimmy said, with a certain quick, sharp note in his voice,—
"I hope you'll excuse my cousin, Miss Benham; she has been so used to handling her own violin carelessly she forgets that other people may feel differently with regard to their instruments; and—"
"Jimmy is as cross as two sticks this morning, Hope; he's done nothing but lecture me ever since he came in," Dolly declared airily; but at the same moment she gave the violin back into its owner's hands, to the owner's great relief, who could not help glancing gratefully at Jimmy as she received it. This glance of gratitude did more to restore Jimmy's good-humor, that had been so sorely disturbed, than anything else could have done; "for," he said to himself, "she doesn't think I'm exactly like Dolly if I am her cousin, and, in spite of Dolly, I believe we should be first-rate friends if we saw more of each other."
He was still more convinced of this possible friendliness as he listened to Hope's playing,—as he saw how thorough an artist she was, how she loved and lived in her music, when the violin was in her hands. No silly little tricks about her, no showing off in her pose and expression like some girl-players he had seen,—like Dolly, for instance,—and yet how pretty she was, with that smooth, brown hair ruffling out around her forehead, and the color coming and going, and the brown eyes, too, coming and going, as it were, in their expression, as she played. As pretty as Dolly and not thinking about it,—not thinking about it a bit, as she stood there, an image of grace, her chin bent lovingly down to her violin, her skilful hands evoking such exquisite strains. And those waltzes! Were there any that were ever written fuller of perfect melody? So absorbed was Jimmy in all this listening and looking, he quite forgot that he had meant to run away directly after Hope had played. Dolly saw that he had forgotten; and while he was yet in the tide of his enthusiastic thanks for the Gungl' waltzes, she slipped the duet she had brought down with her on the music-rack, and said,—