"
Miss Patience smiled, and looked at Cash.
Cash's knees trembled.
All eyes in the room turned upon him.
Cash trembled all over.
Miss Patience said she was gratified to hear that Mr. Cash was a
musician; she admired people who had a musical taste. Whereupon Cash
fell into a chair, as he afterward observed, "chawed up."
Oh that Beau Brummel or any of his admirers could have seen Mo Mercer
all this while! Calm as a summer morning, complacent as a newly-painted
sign, he smiled and patronized, and was the only unexcited person in the
room.
Miss Patience rose. A sigh escaped from all present: the piano was
evidently to be brought in. She approached the thick-leafed table and
removed the covering, throwing it carelessly and gracefully aside,
opened the instrument, and presented the beautiful arrangement of dark
and white keys.
Mo Mercer at this, for the first time in his life, looked confused: he
was Cash's authority in his descriptions of the appearance of the piano;
while Cash himself began to recover the moment that he ceased to be an
object of attention. Many a whisper now ran through the room as to the
"tones," and more particularly the "crank"; none could see them.
Miss Patience took her seat, ran her fingers over a few octaves, and if
"Moses in Egypt" was not perfectly _executed_, Moses in Hardscrabble
_was_.
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