"Do you play tennis?" she asked him.
"Yes."
"Ah, so do I, and well, too, though I'm not English. Lord Lane will
tell you that. And you dance, I know."
"Yes."
"You love it? I do."
"I used to."
"That sounds as if you were a hundred, instead of--nineteen, is it
not?"
"I'm not quite ninety-nine."
"I should like to dance with you. We are the right size for each other
in the dance, are we not?"
"I'd try not to disappoint you."
"Oh, we must have a dance. You love music, I know. One sees it by your
eyes. Once, when I asked Lord Lane if he sang or played, he said that
he 'had no drawing-room tricks.' Rude of him, _n'est-ce pas_? But you?
Is it that you play?"
"The violin will talk for me, if I coax it."
"Ah, I was sure. We are going to be congenial. But the singing? I see
by your face that you sing, though you won't say so. Here is a piano.
I will accompany you, if you like, and if we know the same things.
Perhaps our voices would be well together."
I was surprised to see the Boy get up and go to the piano. "I will
sing if you like; but I accompany myself, always," he said. "I don't
sing things that many people know."
For a moment he sat at the piano, as if thinking. Then he, who had
never told me that he sang, never even spoken of singing, turned into
a young angel, and gripped my heart with a voice as strangely
haunting as his eyes and his little brown face.
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