Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/22

 She was recollecting, as she gazed at him, the extraordinary handicaps which he had been obliged to overcome before he could accomplish anything at all. His mother had been a manicurist, serving men in a hotel barbershop. Ket never had mentioned his father; and likely enough, his mother had never told the boy of his father. Ket's memories were of his mother and himself alone, sleeping in a stuffy attic room in the hotel. When he was very small, he was given a gray and brass-buttoned uniform and had become a page, importantly announcing in the lobby and dining-rooms the names of patrons wanted on the telephone and carrying cards on a small shiny tray.

When he became taller and stronger, the manager made him a bell-boy and Ket picked up his first smattering of music by strumming on the restaurant piano, when scrub-women were washing the floor and the table-tops in the dingy hours of dawn. He had begged the loan of band instruments and made himself a musician. Oh, the boy had done wonderfully well, when one thought of this.

"It is good, Ket," she repeated and tried to speak more enthusiastically, but she was still short of satisfying him.

"What's the matter with it?" he demanded.

"You can do a lot better, Ket!"

"What's the matter with you?" he scorned her. "This is a lot better. It was a riot, I tell you. They stamped and yelled."

"You always make 'em stamp and yell," she retorted.

"Not with other people's stuff; when I play mine, I do."

"That's what I was saying; you always do."

"What's the matter with it, then? What more do you want?" he cried crossly.