Page:Solo (1924).pdf/33

 Wilcoves, for all their frosted cakes and rubber-tyred carriages. There was scant balm in the knowledge that Aunt Verona had the finest piano in the province, for no one came to see it, and unless the windows were open and you played fortissimo it couldn't be heard from the street. Moreover, there was something absurd about his clothes. In summer-time the blouses which Aunt Verona made for him were considered girlish, and in winter-time his mittens and cap were too obviously hand-knitted. If he repeated stories which he had read in Aunt Verona's books—Oliver Twist and Kenilworth and Paul et Virginie—he was rated as "stuck-up." If he recited fables like "Un mal qui répand la terreur" or sang ditties like "Es klappert die Mühle," he was accused of showing off.

On the other hand if he merely remained on the edge of the circle trying to enter into the spirit of a discussion or a game, his self-consciousness condemned him to a subsidiary function. He merely held things, while others performed feats. Although he might efface himself for a time, his nature was such that he preferred solitude to being a nonentity. In his own yard he was more despotic. But Mark Laval and Walter Dreer and Gritty Kestrell were the only playmates who ever came to his yard, and of these only Mark Laval, the humblest, could be counted on to remain when more exciting games were elsewhere afoot.

To avoid mockery he tried concealing his eccentricities, but that involved a cultivation of false enthusiasms from which his nature recoiled more inexorably than it shrank from ridicule. Often enough he faithfully chased a ball or a puck in the hope that by so doing he might win from his playmates a reciprocal wisp of goodwill and understanding regarding his mental games—the images and ideas which his mind kept pursuing night and day. But whenever he invited others to share his images he was met with incomprehension or jeers. Only Mark and Walter