Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/147

 "Ket, is there a piano in there?" she asked.

"It's a bum box," he said. "But you can beat it."

"They let you play it?"

"Let me?" retorted Ket, with a touch of his old arrogance. "They damn near tear my clothes off to make me, when playin's allowed. It's not in the bull-pen; it's behind bars outside for entertainers; so I'm let out sometimes at night to play to the boys in the cells."

"That's fine, Ket."

"Remember," asked Ket, "remember 'Teasing Tears' which you told me was so rotten?" he tantalized her deliberately. "Well, it goes great in the jail anyway. I think I'll change the name to the 'Jail Jazz.' I've timed it better, too. Like this. 'Tum-dada-dum da dada da dum, he tongued, thumping the time also with his fingers on the screen.

Joan Daisy stepped back a pace to thrill by herself at the inspiration which at that second had seized her.

"Like that better?" Ket demanded, ceasing to thrum.

"Yes; a lot."

"You weren't listenin' to it at all!" he accused her.

"I was. . . . I mean I was thinking about you, Ket! I get it all better now!" she exclaimed thrillingly.

"What better?"

"This, you're having to go to jail, Ket, when you didn't do anything. But it's going to make you, don't you see?"

"Make me what?"

"A great musician; that's what it's for. Ket, that's what it must be for!"

"What must be for what?"

"Your trouble, Ket, to make you great! That's the way Wagner became great—through trouble. They banished him, I read in a program; and Schubert—he almost starved. Ket, Ket—this is your trouble, that's what it is, to make you great!"