'Why, mother, the little lilies were in bloom, the first time.'
'And that was in June, Sir,' she said, half-laughingly, and appealing to the stranger.
''Well, well, you make too much noise to be about a bad business. So you like this tinkling cymbal?'
'That does not answer my question. Have you had a teacher?'
The gentleman stooped and examined the piano. 'Who keeps your instrument in order?' he asked with a comical shrug.
It was all like a dream to Fauntleroy, and which was real, which false, he could not tell; suddenly two hands seized his waist, swung him through the casement to his mother. 'See, little monkey,' said the great black-bearded face close to his own, while the cheery laugh rung in his terrified ear like a booming bell, 'I shall set a trap here to-morrow. Good night!' and he abruptly closed the sash.
Fauntleroy felt as if he had just fallen out of bed, and expecting that the next minute would reveal the falsehood of so long and so delightful a hallucination, was yet farther surprised when his mother took his hand and led him home without a word. She was trembling in every nerve herself, she did not cease throwing a frightened glance over her shoulder as they walked, and she seemed unable to recal her thoughts from the region to which they had strayed.
'Naughty child,' said she at last with tears, as she sat once more in the little bed-chamber; 'cruel boy, to occasion me such trouble!'
'Mother, didn't you like to hear me play?'
'You played well; but you have stolen it all.'
'Fauntleroy, I would rather you had never played a note than to have deceived me so.'
'Did you hear the piece you took away from me?'
'Are you going to increase your disobedience by dishonesty? Have you been at my trunk? Have you unlocked that, and got it?'
'I wish you would learn your multiplication-table as easily.'
'Sixteen times sixteen are two hundred and fifty-six, and that's as far as the table goes!'
'You are in high glee to-night. Does it make you happy to be wicked?'
'O mother! not to be wicked! but to be up, to have been out, to have seen my beauty, and oh! I never shall see her any more, I never can go there again!' and bursting into tears, he went crying to bed and sobbing to sleep.