Very kind they were, too; and so were their visitors, all except the big, burly, pretentious-seeming personage, who was planting himself on the piano-stool in such a lordly way, just as Val whispered to his father:
“Mayn’t Bar play a trick on Professor Sturm?”
“Trick? No, my son, nothing rude. How could you ask?”
“Not rude, father, only funny. Bar’s a ventriloquist.”
“Oh!” said the doctor, “I see; Bar, you must be careful.”
Now it happened that “Professor Sturm” had already stirred up Bar’s sense of “personal resistance,” by his previous superciliousness to both him and Val, and he was quite ready to act upon the doctor’s halfway consent.
The professor had evidently proposed to himself that he would electrify the little company by what he would do with that piano, and he now made a dignified and self-confident dash at the keyboard, after the usual manner of experts.
This would have been succeeded promptly by another artistic effort if it had not been followed instantly by a smothered and mournful howl from the depths of the piano.
The professor’s hands, on which more than one huge ring was glittering, came down with a convulsive start, and the discord produced was acknowledged by a repeated and more bitter cry of pain.
“Vas is dese tings?” exclaimed the man of music, springing to his feet. “Dere is somepody in de biano!”