Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 1.pdf/253

Rh with her head on one side, watching him with those magnified eyes through her gilt glasses.

Mrs. Jehoram came up to him before he began to play and asked him the Name of the Charming Piece he was playing the other afternoon. The Angel said it had no name, and Mrs. Jehoram thought music ought never to have any names and wanted to know who it was by, and when the Angel told her he played it out of his head, she said he must be Quite a Genius and looked open (and indisputably fascinating) admiration at him. The Curate from Iping Hanger (who was professionally a Kelt and who played the piano and talked colour and music with an air of racial superiority) watched him jealously.

The Vicar, who was presently captured and set down next to Lady Hammergallow, kept an anxious eye ever Angelward while she told him particulars of the incomes made by violinists—particulars which, for the most part, she invented as she went along. She had been a little ruffled by the incident of the glasses, but had decided that it came within the limits of permissible originality.

So figure to yourself the Green Saloon at Siddermorton House; an Angel thinly disguised in clerical vestments and with a violin in his hands, standing by the grand piano, and a respectable gathering of quiet, nice people, nicely dressed, grouped about the room. Anticipatory gabble—one hears scattered fragments of conversation.

"He is incog.," said the very eldest Miss Papaver to Mrs. Pirbright. "Isn't it quaint and delicious. Jessica Jehoram says she saw him at Vienna, but she 221