“Oh, I do wish I could make music out of that big thing!” she cried pointing to the cello.
“You have to be born to it,” replied Mr. Gilroy solemnly, sawing away with all his might. “It’s an easier matter to blow a tune through that—” he jerked his head in the direction of Mr. Mellitz’s gleaming trombone, whose huge tones fairly drowned out the voices of the other instruments. Mr. Mellitz, though he might have taken offense at the disparaging manner in which his colleague referred to his instrument, seemed not to have heard Mr. Gilroy’s remark. He sat behind the other three, directly under the window, staring fixedly down the shining tube of the trombone at his music;—a meager, melancholy looking man, little given to sociable conversation, with a tallow-colored face which just now was swollen out as he forced all the breath in his lean body into the mouthpiece.
“Why,” wondered Jane, “did he choose to play the trombone?”
With her hands folded in her lap, she sat watching him fixedly, as he pushed his slide up and down. All around her people were dancing, eating, drinking, talking, laughing. People were leaving, people were coming—she was not thinking about them—she was not even thinking about solemn Mr. Mellitz nor of how Mr. Gilroy coaxed his deep, sweet tones out of the frayed strings of his old cello.
She was wondering where Paul was. The very gaiety of the family reunion made her feel the absence of the outcast all the more keenly. Her cheerful hope of his return had waned steadily during the past weeks. There was no news of him, although Mr. Lambert himself had tried to trace him. No, he was gone.
“Well, my lassie, if you watch us hard enough no doubt you’ll learn a thing or two about it,” remarked Mr. Gilroy, when the music came to a stop at the end of the dance, and the musicians mopped their perspiring faces. “Here, take this bow, since you’re so curious, and have a try at it, while I breathe easy a moment or two.” He put the neck of his cello into her hand, and showed her how to press her fingers on the strings.
“Now, just take the bow so—like this, see? That’s better—and bite the string with it—”
Jane laughingly tried to do as she was told, but the sound that the instrument emitted under her touch showed only too plainly that sweetly as it could sing under the fingers of Mr. Gilroy it had a very different temper for rash amateurs.
As she looked up, laughing, into the old man’s face, she suddenly caught her breath in a gasp. Through the window, just behind the long head of Mr. Mellitz, it seemed to her that she had seen a face—though the next moment it had disappeared.
“What is it?” inquired Mr. Gilroy, noticing her frightened expression. “Aren’t seeing ghosts are ye?” he added jocosely.