William Clodd, mopping his brow, laid down the screwdriver, and stepping
back, regarded the result of his labours with evident satisfaction.
"It looks like a bookcase," said William Clodd. "You might sit in the
room for half an hour and never know it wasn't a bookcase."
What William Clodd had accomplished was this: he had had prepared, after
his own design, what appeared to be four shelves laden with works
suggestive of thought and erudition. As a matter of fact, it was not a
bookcase, but merely a flat board, the books merely the backs of volumes
that had long since found their way into the paper-mill. This artful
deception William Clodd had screwed upon a cottage piano standing in the
corner of the editorial office of _Good Humour_. Half a dozen real
volumes piled upon the top of the piano completed the illusion. As
William Clodd had proudly remarked, a casual visitor might easily have
been deceived.
"If you had to sit in the room while she was practising mixed scales,
you'd be quickly undeceived," said the editor of _Good Humour_, one Peter
Hope. He spoke bitterly.
"You are not always in," explained Clodd. "There must be hours when she
is here alone, with nothing else to do. Besides, you will get used to it
after a while."
"You, I notice, don't try to get used to it," snarled Peter Hope. "You
always go out the moment she commences."
"A friend of mine," continued William Clodd, "worked in an office over a
piano-shop for seven years, and when the shop closed, it nearly ruined
his business; couldn't settle down to work for want of it."
"Why doesn't he come here?" asked Peter Hope. "The floor above is
vacant."
"Can't," explained William Clodd. "He's dead."
"I can quite believe it," commented Peter Hope.
"It was a shop where people came and practised, paying sixpence an hour,
and he had got to like it--said it made a cheerful background to his
thoughts. Wonderful what you can get accustomed to."
"What's the good of it?" demanded Peter Hope.
"What's the good of it!" retorted William Clodd indignantly. "Every girl
ought to know how to play the piano. A nice thing if when her lover asks
her to play something to him--"
"I wonder you don't start a matrimonial agency," sneered Peter Hope.
"Love and marriage--you think of nothing else."
"When you are bringing up a young girl--" argued Clodd.
"But you're not," interrupted Peter; "that's just what I'm trying to get
out of your head. It is I who am bringing her up. And between
ourselves, I wish you wouldn't interfere so much."
"You are not fit to bring up a girl."
"I've brought her up for seven years without your help. She's my adopted
daughter, not yours. I do wish people would learn to mind their own
business."
"You've done very well--"
"Thank you," said Peter Hope sarcastically. "It's very kind of you.
Perhaps when you've time, you'll write me out a testimonial."
"--up till now," concluded the imperturbable Clodd. "A girl of eighteen
wants to know something else besides mathematics and the classics. You
don't understand them."
"I do understand them," asserted Peter Hope. "What do you know about
them? You're not a father."
"You've done your best," admitted William Clodd in a tone of patronage
that irritated Peter greatly; "but you're a dreamer; you don't know the
world. The time is coming when the girl will have to think of a
husband."
"There's no need for her to think of a husband, not for years," retorted
Peter Hope. "And even when she does, is strumming on the piano going to
help her?"
"I tink--I tink," said Dr. Smith, who had hitherto remained a silent
listener, "our young frent Clodd is right. You haf never quite got over
your idea dat she was going to be a boy. You haf taught her de tings a
boy should know."
"You cut her hair," added Clodd.
"I don't," snapped Peter.
"You let her have it cut--it's the same thing. At eighteen she knows
more about the ancient Greeks and Romans than she does about her own
frocks."
"De young girl," argued the doctor, "what is she? De flower dat makes
bright for us de garden of life, de gurgling brook dat murmurs by de
dusty highway, de cheerful fire--"
"She can't be all of them," snapped Peter, who was a stickler for style.
"Do keep to one simile at a time."
"Now you listen to plain sense," said William Clodd. "You want--we all
want--the girl to be a success all round."
"I want her--" Peter Hope was rummaging among the litter on the desk. It
certainly was not there. Peter pulled out a drawer-two drawers. "I
wish," said Peter Hope, "I wish sometimes she wasn't quite so clever."
The old doctor rummaged among dusty files of papers in a corner. Clodd
found it on the mantelpiece concealed beneath the hollow foot of a big
brass candlestick, and handed it to Peter.
Peter had one vice--the taking in increasing quantities of snuff, which
was harmful for him, as he himself admitted. Tommy, sympathetic to most
masculine frailties, was severe, however, upon this one.
"You spill it upon your shirt and on your coat," had argued Tommy. "I
like to see you always neat. Besides, it isn't a nice habit. I do wish,
dad, you'd give it up."
"I must," Peter had agreed. "I'll break myself of it. But not all at
once--it would be a wrench; by degrees, Tommy, by degrees."
So a compromise had been compounded. Tommy was to hide the snuff-box. It
was to be somewhere in the room and to be accessible, but that was all.
Peter, when self-control had reached the breaking-point, might try and
find it. Occasionally, luck helping Peter, he would find it early in the
day, when he would earn his own bitter self-reproaches by indulging in
quite an orgie. But more often Tommy's artfulness was such that he would
be compelled, by want of time, to abandon the search. Tommy always knew
when he had failed by the air of indignant resignation with which he
would greet her on her return. Then perhaps towards evening, Peter,
looking up, would see the box open before his nose, above it, a pair of
reproving black eyes, their severity counterbalanced by a pair of full
red lips trying not to smile. And Peter, knowing that only one pinch
would be permitted, would dip deeply.
"I want her," said Peter Hope, feeling with his snuff-box in his hand
more confidence in his own judgment, "to be a sensible, clever woman,
capable of earning her own living and of being independent; not a mere
helpless doll, crying for some man to come and take care of her."
"A woman's business," asserted Clodd, "is to be taken care of."
"Some women, perhaps," admitted Peter; "but Tommy, you know very well, is
not going to be the ordinary type of woman. She has brains; she will
make her way in the world."
"It doesn't depend upon brains," said Clodd. "She hasn't got the
elbows."
"The elbows?"
"They are not sharp enough. The last 'bus home on a wet night tells you
whether a woman is capable of pushing her own way in the world. Tommy's
the sort to get left on the kerb."
"She's the sort," retorted Peter, "to make a name for herself and to be
able to afford a cab. Don't you bully me!" Peter sniffed
self-assertiveness from between his thumb and finger.
"Yes, I shall," Clodd told him, "on this particular point. The poor
girl's got no mother."
Fortunately for the general harmony the door opened at the moment to
admit the subject of discussion.
"Got that _Daisy Blossom_ advertisement out of old Blatchley," announced
Tommy, waving triumphantly a piece of paper over her head.
"No!" exclaimed Peter. "How did you manage it?"
"Asked him for it," was Tommy's explanation.
"Very odd," mused Peter; "asked the old idiot for it myself only last
week. He refused it point-blank."
Clodd snorted reproof. "You know I don't like your doing that sort of
thing. It isn't proper for a young girl--"
"It's all right," assured him Tommy; "he's bald!"
"That makes no difference," was Clodd's opinion.
"Yes it does," was Tommy's. "I like them bald."
Tommy took Peter's head between her hands and kissed it, and in doing so
noticed the tell-tale specks of snuff.
"Just a pinch, my dear," explained Peter, "the merest pinch."
Tommy took up the snuff-box from the desk. "I'll show you where I'm
going to put it this time." She put it in her pocket. Peter's face
fell.
"What do you think of it?" said Clodd. He led her to the corner. "Good
idea, ain't it?"
"Why, where's the piano?" demanded Tommy.
Clodd turned in delighted triumph to the others.
"Humbug!" growled Peter.
"It isn't humbug," cried Clodd indignantly. "She thought it was a
bookcase--anybody would. You'll be able to sit there and practise by the
hour," explained Clodd to Tommy. "When you hear anybody coming up the
stairs, you can leave off."
"How can she hear anything when she--" A bright idea occurred to Peter.
"Don't you think, Clodd, as a practical man," suggested Peter
insinuatingly, adopting the Socratic method, "that if we got her one of
those dummy pianos--you know what I mean; it's just like an ordinary
piano, only you don't hear it?"
Clodd shook his head. "No good at all. Can't tell the effect she is
producing."
"Quite so. Then, on the other hand, Clodd, don't you think that hearing
the effect they are producing may sometimes discourage the beginner?"
Clodd's opinion was that such discouragement was a thing to be battled
with.
Tommy, who had seated herself, commenced a scale in contrary motion.
"Well, I'm going across to the printer's now," explained Clodd, taking up
his hat. "Got an appointment with young Grindley at three. You stick to
it. A spare half-hour now and then that you never miss does wonders.
You've got it in you." With these encouraging remarks to Tommy, Clodd
disappeared.
"Easy for him," muttered Peter bitterly. "Always does have an
appointment outside the moment she begins."
Tommy appeared to be throwing her very soul into the performance. Passers-
by in Crane Court paused, regarded the first-floor windows of the
publishing and editorial offices of _Good Humour_ with troubled looks,
then hurried on.
"She has--remarkably firm douch!" shouted the doctor into Peter's ear.
"Will see you--evening. Someting--say to you."
The fat little doctor took his hat and departed. Tommy, ceasing
suddenly, came over and seated herself on the arm of Peter's chair.
"Feeling grumpy?" asked Tommy.
"It isn't," explained Peter, "that I mind the noise. I'd put up with
that if I could see the good of it."
"It's going to help me to get a husband, dad. Seems to me an odd way of
doing it; but Billy says so, and Billy knows all about everything."
"I can't understand you, a sensible girl, listening to such nonsense,"
said Peter. "It's that that troubles me."
"Dad, where are your wits?" demanded Tommy. "Isn't Billy acting like a
brick? Why, he could go into Fleet Street to half a dozen other papers
and make five hundred a year as advertising-agent--you know he could. But
he doesn't. He sticks to us. If my making myself ridiculous with that
tin pot they persuaded him was a piano is going to please him, isn't it
common sense and sound business, to say nothing of good nature and
gratitude, for me to do it? Dad, I've got a surprise for him. Listen."
And Tommy, springing from the arm of Peter's chair, returned to the
piano.
"What was it?" questioned Tommy, having finished. "Could you recognise
it?"
"I think," said Peter, "it sounded like--It wasn't 'Home, Sweet Home,'
was it?"
Tommy clapped her hands. "Yes, it was. You'll end by liking it
yourself, dad. We'll have musical 'At Homes.'"
"Tommy, have I brought you up properly, do you think?"
"No dad, you haven't. You have let me have my own way too much. You
know the proverb: 'Good mothers make bad daughters.' Clodd's right;
you've spoilt me, dad. Do you remember, dad, when I first came to you,
seven years ago, a ragged little brat out of the streets, that didn't
know itself whether 'twas a boy or a girl? Do you know what I thought to
myself the moment I set eyes on you? 'Here's a soft old juggins; I'll be
all right if I can get in here!' It makes you smart, knocking about in
the gutters and being knocked about; you read faces quickly."
"Do you remember your cooking, Tommy? You 'had an aptitude for it,'
according to your own idea."