Ever After Read Online Free Page B

screw-drivers paused to regard him curiously.
    “Would you be Mr. Fitzhugh Sprague, then?” one of them asked, with reference to the label on the board in his hand.
    Fitz nodded, not taking his eyes from the piano.
    “Then you’re the feller it belongs to.”
    “Yes,” Fitz agreed like a sleepwalker. “Oh, yes, we belong to each other.” His thin, blunt-tipped fingers touched the mahogany lid which covered the keys. It rose on hidden hinges and dropped back soundlessly on little rubber knobs, and the harlequin keyboard was there. His right hand hovered and then came to rest almost timidly, and the piano awoke to sweet treble harmony in G. “Lordy,” he muttered to himself. “Oh, Lord-a-massy, hear that tone.” His left hand came home to the bass.
    “How about givin’ us a tune, sir?” suggested one of the men from the express company.
    “Sure, what’ll you have?” Fitz edged the still crated piano bench crosswise in the path with his foot and sat down on the end of it, his fingers wandering among the keys.
    “ Under the Bamboo Tree , maybe,” said the man, and winked at his companions, deluded that the owner of so elegant an instrument would be able to play nothing less than a nocturne at best. But—
    “ If I like-a you and you like-a me,
    And we like-a both the same,
    I’d like to say, this very day,
    I’d like to change your name —”
    obliged the piano promptly, and their faces lighted up and they began to hum, and one of them beat time with his hat as though leading a whole orchestra. At first Fitz whistled softly under his breath. Then his crooning, plaintive baritone emerged almost imperceptibly into the open, and soon they were a fine quartet with the pedal going, and the three little coloured boys piping up in perfect key.
    “If I love-a you and you love-a me,
    And we love-a both the same,
    One live as two, two live as one,
    Un -der the bamboo tree—”
    It was the purest ragtime magnificently played, and passers-by on their way home to lunch began to linger, while Sue stood laughing on the porch and Melicent came out of the house to find that the song had spread to a cluster of beaming faces at the gate and was being echoed from within, where Micah and Shadrach under Phoebe’s supervision were rolling the old upright along the hall towards its exile in the library.
    The Bamboo Tree ended with a full choral effect, and Melicent ran down the steps and caught Fitz’s arm.
    “Do stop, darling, you’re disturbing the whole neighbourhood! Besides, the men can bring it in now, we’ve made room.”
    “Listen,” said Fitz, his young face brooding and serious above the keys like a mother’s above a cradle, and he played a major chord and allowed the strings to vibrate to a vanishing point on the still, cold air. “Listen to this,” he said, and began a series of arpeggi, his fingers caressing ripples of crystal sound from the keys.
    “Yes, dear, it’s beautiful,” his mother agreed affectionately. “But do come away now so the men can—”
    “Isn’t she a lady,” he marvelled, slipping into a progression of chords in the whole tone scale. “Isn’t she an angel? Listen to that—!”
    “Fitz!” shouted Sedgwick from the porch, where Micah and Shadrach stood grinning behind him. “Leave it alone now, and let’s get it into the house.” At a sign from him the two coloured men came down the steps and joined the express men, and they all laid hold on the glossy mahogany and drew the piano slowly from under Fitz’s hands. He sat there on the crated bench and watched it go.
    “Careful, now,” he admonished them gently, and looked up at his mother. “Where did it come from? Is it you I thank?”
    “Your Aunt Sally sent it.”
    “From France ?How did she know that was what I wanted?”
    “I told her,” said Sue, joining them in the path. “It’s from New York, she must have cabled. And it’s your Christmas present, Fitz, you’re not supposed to have it now.”
    “It’s a