Also, he would have preferred to warm up on something familiar. Amy took
her instrument from its case with a suppressed sense of ecstasy; and it is
the ecstatic who generally sets the pace.
The thing went none too well. Amy was the only one who had seen the music
before, and she was the only one who particularly wanted to make music now.
However, the immediate need was not that the song should go well, but that
it should go: that it should go on, that it should go on and on,
repetitiously, until it should come (or even not come) to go better. She
slid her bow across the strings with tasteful passion. She enjoyed still
more than her own tones the tones of Cope's voice,--tones which, whether in
happy unison with hers or not, were, after all, seldom misplaced, whatever
they may have lacked in heartiness and confidence. It was a short piece,
and on the third time it went rather well.
"How perfectly lovely!" exclaimed Mrs. Phillips, at the right moment.
Cope smiled deprecatingly. "It might be made to go very nicely," he said.
"It _has_ gone very nicely," insisted Amy; "it did, this last time."
She waved her bow with some vivacity.
Pages:
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211