“I wish I had strength just once,” she said, “to play as long as I should like to.”
“Then you'd never stop, Dorothy, not even at the ends,” said
Albert, looking comically doleful at the mere prospect of such an undesirable state of affairs.
“I remember Mr. Belden told me on the steamer,” said Marie-Celeste, with the air of one who settles down for a good talk with a familiar friend, “of some musician who heard some one strike two or three chords and then suddenly stop, and after that he; could not get a wink of sleep till he jumped out of bed and rushed to his piano and struck the chord that belonged at the end of the others.”
“Yes; that was Handel, I think,” said Miss Allyn.
“Handel!” repeated Marie-Celeste; “I want to remember that name and everything else besides, if I can, that Mr. Belden told me.”
“Who was this Mr. Belden, Marie-Celeste?”
“Oh, he was the queerest English gentleman—an English gentleman that I met on the steamer. I don't think many people liked him—he said himself they didn't, anyway; but I liked him, and we grew to be great friends, and we had a long chat together almost every day.”
“What about?” asked Albert eagerly, since chats were just in his line.
“Oh, often about books, and a great deal about the castle here, for he seemed to know all about it. Besides, he was reading a book called 'Royal Windsor,' and that was how I came to know him, because I knocked it out of his hands accidentally, and then I had to ask him to excuse me, and that's the way we commenced to be friends. After that he told me a great deal about what he had been reading. And did you ever hear, Albert, about a little French girl who was made Queen of England, and came to live in the castle when she was only eight years old, and who used to come to this very chapel?”