Page:Anna Chapin--Half a dozen boys.djvu/222

198 “Please sing something more, just one.” And she motioned him back to the piano.

The young man demurred a little, but, as she insisted,—

“Well,” said he, “I sang to Fred before, now I will sing to you.”

And, after a few random chords, he gradually drifted into the prelude to Schubert’s “Serenade,” a song that had always won the enthusiastic applause of the impressionable young ladies  whom he met in society. With all its intense sentimentality, it had never been a favorite with  practical Bess; but there was no resisting the  influence of such a voice, and before he had  finished a dozen notes, Bess was held by the  same charm which she had felt that other evening in the church. She was fast losing all consciousness of everything but the passionate  beauty of the music, when a long, gusty howl  brought her back to herself, and made them all  turn their heads to see whence the sound proceeded. There on the floor sat Fuzz, erect on his haunches, his paws in the air and his curls  dejectedly flattened over one eye, while, with  his nose pointed skyward, he was giving expres-