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Bellingham in Barnard's
favourite lop-sided easy chair--the depressed seat of which suggested
its customary use by an elephant of sedentary habits--and opened the
diminutive piano.
"I wonder if Miss Bellingham would give us a little music?" I said.
"I wonder if she could?" was the smiling response. "Do you know," she
continued, "I have not touched a piano for nearly two years? It will be
quite an interesting experiment--to me; but if it fails, you will be the
sufferers. So you must choose."
"My verdict," said Mr. Bellingham, "is _fiat experimentum_, though I
won't complete the quotation, as that would seem to disparage Doctor
Barnard's piano. But before you begin, Ruth, there is one rather
disagreeable matter that I want to dispose of, so that I may not disturb
the harmony with it later."
He paused, and we all looked at him expectantly.
"I suppose, Doctor Thorndyke," he said, "you read the newspapers?"
"I don't," replied Thorndyke. "But I ascertain, for purely business
purposes, what they contain.


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