w?"

Laura had no objection; she had played to people before her fingers
were long enough to cover the octave. She took the volume of Thalberg
she had brought with her, selected "Home, Sweet Home", and pranced in.

Her audience kept utter silence; but, had she been a little sharper,
she would have grasped that it was the silence of amazement. After the
prim sonatinas that had gone before, Thalberg's florid ornaments had a
shameless sound. Her performance, moreover, was a startling one; the
forte pedal was held down throughout; the big chords were crashed and
banged with all the strength a pair of twelve-year-old arms could put
into them; and wrong notes were freely scattered. Still, rhythm and
melody were well marked, and there was no mistaking the agility of the
small fingers.

Dead silence, too, greeted the conclusion of the piece Several girls
were very red, from trying not to laugh. The Principal tugged at his
moustache, in abstracted fashion.

Laura had reached her seat again before Mrs. Strachey said undecidedly:
"Thank you, dear. Did you ... hm ... learn that piece here?"

Laura saw nothing wrong. "Oh, no, at home," she answered. "I wouldn't
care to play the things I learn here, to people. They're so dull."

A girl emitted a faint squeak. But a half turn of Mrs. Strachey's head
subdued her. "Oh, I hope you will soon get to like classical music
also," said the lady gravely, and in all good faith. "We prefer it, you
know, to any other."

"Do you mean things like the AIR IN G WITH VARIATIONS? I'm afraid I
never shall. There's no tune in them."

Music was as fatal to Laura's equilibrium as wine would have been.
Finding herself next Mr. Strachey, she now turned to him and said, with
what she believed to be ease of manner: "Mr. Strachey, will you please
tell me what that picture is hanging over the mantelpiece? I've been
looking at it ever since I came in, but I can't make it out. Are those
ghosts, those things behind the man, or what?"

It took Mr. Strachey a minute to recover from his astonishment. He
stroked hard, and the look he bent on Laura was not encouraging.

"It seems to be all the same face," continued the child, her eyes on
the picture.

"That," said Mr. Strachey, with extreme deliberation: "that is the
portrait, by a great painter, of a great poet--Dante Alighieri."

"Oh, Dante, is it?" said Laura showily--she had once heard the name.
"Oh, yes, of course, I know now. He wrote a book, didn't h