Page:The Blind Bow-Boy (IA blindbowboy00vanv).pdf/36



Harold had been brought up among the flutter of petticoats. That fact had established his character more conclusively than the subsequent college years. His aunt, born Prewett, had never married. Christened Sarah, she was soon dubbed Sadie; after a trip to Europe she herself had altered this to Sadi. The trip to Europe was responsible for other phenomena: one was the aforementioned Ninon de Lenclos cloak, which was a modification of a model she had observed at a famous Parisian couturiere's; another was a passion for the method of Delsarte, which, for a time, she had contemplated imparting to New York débutantes; a third was an obsession for the Anna Song from Nanon, which had caught her fancy at a performance of the opera she had heard in Munich and which had held it to the present day. Nearly every morning, indeed, it was her custom to seat herself before her old rosewood square piano, with its thin metallic tone, and perform this waltz, somewhat woodenly, singing the words in her bedizened German and, latterly, in a voice which frequently cracked: