For you have to be
something to play the fiddle, Ninette.'
'Yes,' said the little girl, wincing; 'you are right, dear Anton. Perhaps
you will get rich and go away and leave me?'
'No, Ninette,' I declared grandly, 'I will always take care of you. I have
no doubt I shall get rich, because I am going to be a great musician, but
I shall not leave you. I will have a big house on the Champs Elysees, and
then you shall come and live with me, and be my housekeeper. And in the
evenings, I will play to you and make you open your eyes, Ninette. You will
like me to play, you know; we are often dull in the evenings.'
'Yes,' said Ninette meekly, 'we will buy your fiddle to-morrow, dear Anton.
Let us go home now.'
Poor vanished Ninette! I must often have made the little heart sore with
some of the careless things I said. Yet looking back at it now, I know that
I never cared for any living person so much as I did for Ninette.
I have very few illusions left now; a childhood, such as mine, does not
tend to preserve them, and time and success have not made me less cynical.
Still I have never let my scepticism touch that childish presence. Lady
Greville once said to me, in the presence of her nephew Felix Leominster,
a musician too, like myself, that we three were curiously suited, for that
we were, without exception, the three most cynical persons in the universe,
Perhaps in a way she was right.
Pages:
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185