“You let that window alone,” commanded Henriette, sternly. A long pause—Henriette seated in rigid agony at the foot of the bed; the Armstrongs experimenting with the Vox Humana stop. “Pauline, do you mean to say that you can sleep? Pauline! Pauline!”
“What’s the matter now?” asked Pauline.
“I am going to take my brush—no, I shall take your brush, Pauline Beaumont—and hurl it at them!”
“Oh, sister, please don’t,” begged Mysie from within, like the voices on a stage.
Henriette spoke not again; she strode out of the room, and did even as she had threatened. She flung Pauline’s brush straight at the organist sitting before the window. Whether she really meant to injure young Armstrong’s candid brow is an open question; and, judging from the result, I infer that she did not mean to do more than scare her sister; therefore she aimed afar. By consequence the missile sped straight into the centre of the window. But not through it; the window was raised, and a wire screen rattled the brush back with a shivering jar.
“What’s that? A bat?” said Armstrong, happily playing on. His father and mother were beaming upon him in deep content—his father a trifle sleepy, but resolved, the morrow being Sunday, to enjoy this musical hour to the full, his mother seated beside him and reading the numbers aloud.
“You see, Ikey,” she had explained, “that’s what makes you slow. While you’re reading the numbers, you lose ’em on the organ; and while you’re finding the numbers on the keys, you loose ’em on the paper. I’ll read them awful low, so no one would suspect, and you keep your whole mind on those keys. Now begin again; I’ve got a pin to prick them—2-4-3, 1-3—no, 1-8, 1-8—it’s only one 1-8; guess we better begin again.”
So Mrs. Armstrong droned forth the numbers and Ikey hammered them on the organ, pumping with his feet, whenever he did not forget. The two boys slept peacefully through the weird clamor. The neighbors, with one exception, were apparently undisturbed. That exception, named Henriette Beaumont, heard with swelling wrath.
“I’ve thrown the brush,” said she. No response from the pillow. “Now I’m going to throw the broken-handled mug,” continued Henriette, in a tone of deadly resolve; “it’s heavy, and it may kill some one, but I can’t help it!” Still a dead silence. Crash! smash! The mug with the broken handle had sped against the weather-boarding.