Big Game - A Story for Girls

Fortunately for herself and her friends, Margot was gifted with

sufficient insight to grasp the poetry behind the prose, and it gave her

patience to persevere. Solution came at last, in the shape of the

wheezy old piano in the corner, opened in a moment of aimless wandering

to and fro. Margot was no great performer, but what she could play she

played by heart, and Nature had provided her with a sweet, thrush-like

voice, with that true musical thrill which no teaching can impart. At

the first few bars of a Chopin nocturne Mr Macalister's newspaper

wavered, and fell to his knee. Margot heard the rustle of it, slid

gradually into a simpler melody, and was conscious of a heavy hand

waving steadily to and fro.

"Ha-ha!" murmured Mr Macalister, at the end of the strain. "Hum-hum!

The piano wants tuning, I'm thinking!" It was foreign to his nature to

express any gratification, but that he had deigned to speak at all was a

distinct advance, and equal to a whole volume of compliments from

another man.

"Maybe," he added, after a pause, "if ye were to sing us a ballad it

would be less obsearved!"

So Margot sang, and, finding a book of Scotch selections, could gratify

the old man by selecting his favourite airs, and providing him with an

excuse to hum a gentle accompaniment. Music, it appeared, was Mr

Macalister's passion in life. As a young man he had been quite a

celebrated performer at Penny Readings and Church Soirees, and had been

told by a lady who had heard Sims Reeves that she preferred his

rendering of "Tom Bowling" to that of the famous tenor. This anecdote

was proudly related by his wife, and though Mr Macalister cried,

"Hoots!" and rustled his paper in protest, it was easy to see that he

was gratified by the remembrance.

Margot essayed one Scotch air after another, and was instructed in the

proper pronunciation of the words; feigning, it is to be feared, an

extra amount of incapacity to pronounce the soft "ch," for the sake of

giving her patient a better opportunity of displaying his superior

adroitness.

Comparatively speaking, Mr Macalister became quite genial and agreeable

in the course of that musical hour, and when Margot finished her

performance by singing "The Oak and the Ash," he waxed, for him,

positively enthusiastic.

"It's a small organ," he pronounced judicially, "a ve-ry small organ.

Ye would make a poor show on a concert platform, but for all that, I'm

not saying that it might not have been worse. Ye can keep in tune, and

that's a mearcy!"

"Indeed, Alexander, I call it a bonnie voice! There's no call for

squallings and squakings in a bit of a room like this. I love to hear a

lassie's voice sound sweet and clear, and happy like herself, and that's

just the truth about Miss Vane's singing. Thank ye, my dear. It's been

a treat to hear you."