Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/37

 cept her one resistance to him when she was twelve and which had resulted in her ceasing to take money from him for her personal expenditure.

She lay, trying not to think of him, and of itself Ket's marching tune thrummed in her head again. It was lively and stirring and good; but not great. Joan Daisy had occupied a gallery seat in Orchestra Hall frequently enough to know what great music was; she knew how great music made her feel, what Mozart excited within her breast, and Wagner, Tschaikowsky, Rimski-Korsakoy and even Elgar.

Ket's tiny tune ran out, and there beat within her the mighty measures of "Pomp and Circumstance," parading a pageant of her dreams of accomplishment and honor for Ket and for Joan Daisy Royle, who now lay in the soft, fine bed obtained by Dads' pretense.

Ket was not great but she could make him great, as a woman had inspired each of the great musicians.

Joan pulled up her unpaid-for coverlet, regardless of it, as she imagined a name, his name—Ketlar—cut in the stone of fame's cornice in Orchestra Hall beside Mozart's and Beethoven's and Wagner's. She rehearsed the sentences which previously she had improvised for the page which would be printed in the concert programs of years and generations hence when Ket's great concertos and symphonies, which she would have inspired, would be played by the best orchestras in the world.

"Ketlar, Frederic. Born in Chicago. Little is known of his parentage."

She made paraphrase of a biography in an Orchestra program.

"His mother was a manicurist at a hotel where the boy picked up the simpler elementals of music from members of the restaurant orchestra.

"He early showed talent which, however, he turned to