How is he getting along now?"
"He's doing very well, I think."
"That's ce'tainly good hearing," was his ironical response. "How
come he to get hurt, did y'u say?"
His sleek smile was a thing hateful to see.
"A hound bit me," explained the sheepman.
"Y'u don't say! I reckon y'u oughtn't to have got in its way. Did
y'u kill it?"
"Not yet."
"That was surely a mistake, for it's liable to bite again."
The girl felt a sudden sickness at his honeyed cruelty, but
immediately pulled herself together. For whatever fiendish
intention might be in his mind she meant to frustrate it.
"I hear you are of a musical turn, Mr. Bannister. Won't you play
for us?"
She had by chance found his weak spot. Instantly his eyes lit up.
He stepped across to the piano and began to look over the music,
though not so intently that he forgot to keep under his eye the
man on the lounge.
"H'm! Mozart, Grieg, Chopin, Raff, Beethoven. Y'u ce'tainly have
the music here; I wonder if y'u have the musician." He looked her
over with a bold, unscrupulous gaze. "It's an old trick to have
classical music on the rack and ragtime in your soul. Can y'u
play these?"
"You will have to be the judge of that," she said.
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