Page:Ballinger Price--The Happy Venture.djvu/90

76 living-room door, with a headlong tale of enchanted hearthstones, ebony elephants, cinnamon toast, music that had made him cry, and, most of all, of the benevolent, mysterious presence who had wrought all this. Phil and Ken shook their heads, suggested that some supper would make Kirk feel better, and set a boundary limit of the orchard and meadow fence on his peregrinations.

"But I promised him I'd come again," Kirk protested; "and I can ﬁnd the way. I must, because he says I can make music like that—and he's the only person who could show me how."

Felicia extracted a more coherent story as she sat on the edge of Kirk's bed later that evening. She came downstairs sober and strangely elated, to electrify her brother by saying:

"Something queer has happened to Kirk. He's too excited, but he's simply shining. And do you suppose it can possibly be true that he has music in him? I mean real, extraordinary music, like—Beethoven or somebody."

But Ken roared so gleefully over the ridiculous idea of his small brother's remotely