Page:Ballinger Price--The Happy Venture.djvu/18

4 Kenelm rose and removed his sister bodily from the stool, for all that she was fifteen and nearly as tall as he.

"The piano's just been tuned," she protested, struggling back, "and the thing has such lovely, cruddly, doleful chords, lambkin."

Cruddly's not a word. And for pity's sake, don't call me 'lamb'!"

"Mr. Sturgis, then. Kirk likes it—don't you, honey?"

The child who leaned beside the piano raised his dark head, and turned to her a vividly responsive face and shadowed, unseeing eyes.

"I like all the songs you sing," he said, putting out his hand to her with the slight hesitancy of the blind. "Let her do it. Ken—please!"

Kenelm swung him suddenly up and perched him on top of the piano, where he recovered himself with a small gasp, half startled and half amused. He was never quite prepared for this brother who swooped on him unexpectedly out of the darkness.

"Oh, take him off!" Felicia objected. "I don't want his boots dangling at my ear while I'm playing."