Page:Ballinger Price--The Happy Venture.djvu/149

Rh had worked to make it so, and it had ripened and expanded under their hands.

"I should n't mind Mother's seeing it, now," Ken reﬂected.

He sighed as he remembered the last difficult letter which he and Phil had composed—a strictly truthful letter, which said much and told nothing. He wondered how much longer the fiction would have to be sustained; when the doctor at Hilltop would sanction a revelation of all that had been going on since that desolate March day, now so long ago.

As Ken neared the house, he heard the reedy voice of the organ, and, stopping beside the lighted window, looked in. Felicia was mending beside the lamp; Kirk sat at the melodeon, rapturously making music. From the somewhat vague sweetness of the melody, Ken recognized it as one of Kirk's own compositions—without beginning, middle, or end, but with a gentle, eerie harmony all its own. The Maestro, who was thoroughly modern in his instruction, if old-school himself, was teaching composition hand in hand with the other branches of music, and he allowed himself, at times, to become rather enthusiastic.