Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/323

 ing going on; and when you found Adele and the police took you to Ket and me and you caught us both lying, you went after us for all that was in you."

She stopped speaking, though her thoughts leaped on and on, as he could see from her intensity.

The rear wheels of the taxi had tire chains, and as they scraped in the ruts of frozen snow, one became displaced so that a link struck a mudguard and clanked regularly with each whirl of the wheel. He noticed that it set Joan Daisy's head to nodding, and he asked, "Shall I have that chain taken off?"

"No, I like it."

"Like it? Why?"

"It beats time."

"To what?"

"The tune in my head."

"One of Ketlar's?"

For reply she sang softly with marked, thrilling measure the theme of Elgar's great march. "I love it!" she cried. "You've heard it?"

"Yes."

"Didn't it make you want to—do something wonderful?"

"I liked it," he said.

"Like Rimski-Korsakov, too?"

"I don't know much of his music."

"He's another doer! And there's an American named Schelling. They played a great piece of his at the Orchestra! There's a red-headed boy from Michigan who composes music; his name is in the concert program. Sowerby, it is. Of course, he's studied; he's been at the great conservatories. Ket must go to a conservatory; that's what I must try to make him do."

Calvin drew off into his corner of the cab, with his heart thumping jealously. He was taking her, he realized,