The “big white house” was overflowing with music, or, rather, with musical acrobatics. Scales, major and minor, octaves, arpeggios, and all other musical combinations were madly chasing each other up and down the keyboard.
“Come on, Paul.” A girl’s black head appeared at the window. The player merely glanced at her and went on with his fireworks. “Oh, come on, you lummix! Shut up this row and come on. We’re going round the ranch and then down the west trail to the river.”
The player’s sole answer was a wave of his left hand, his right still careering madly up the chromatic scale.
“Aw, Paul, won’t you come?” A little girl whose face was screwed up in a bewitching pout came to the door.
“Now, Peg, you know I don’t quit till I’m done, and I’ve got half an hour yet. Come back for me then, Peg.”
She came close to him. “I don’t want to go with Asa and Adelina without you. They—they—I don’t want to go.”
“Oh, go on, Peg, for a run as far as Pine Croft driveway and back again. Go! See, the rain is all gone. It’s a lovely day. Run now, that’s a good girl. I’ll come when I’m through my practice.”
“You’re a mean old thing. You don’t care a bit about me,” said Peg, bouncing indignantly out of the room.
But the boy paid no heed. He was hard at his scales again with an enthusiasm which amounted almost to a passion. All else, for the time being, was as nothing to him. He was at double octaves now, his fingers roaring up and down the keys. In the full tide of the uproar Colonel Pelham appeared at the door of the dining room where his wife was engaged in her domestic activities.
“What a row the chap makes!” he said. “You’d think it was a full grown man at the thing.”