Page:Ballinger Price--The Happy Venture.djvu/169

Rh neck. In his passionately whispered confidence the old gentleman must have found solace, for he presently smiled,—a real smile,—and then still keeping Kirk beside him, began playing a sonata. Ken and Felicia, sunk unobtrusively in the big chairs at the hearth, were each aware of a subtle kindredship between these two at the piano—a something which they could not altogether understand.

"He brings out a side of Kirk that we don't know about," Felicia thought. "It must be the music. Oh, what music!"

It was difficult to leave a place of such divine sounds, but Kirk's bedtime was long past, and the moon stood high and cold above the Maestro's garden.

"Is it shining on all the empty pools and things?" Kirk asked, at the hedge.

"Yes, and on the meadow, and the silver roof of Applegate Farm," Phil told him.

Roses in the moonlight, to-night all thine, Kirk sang dreamily.

"Do you mean to say you can sing it so soon?" Ken gasped.

"He ran away in the moonlight," Kirk murmured. "Away to sea. Would you, Ken?"