While you are forming, I'll play
a few bars to give you the time."
Did she bewitch the piano that it responded so wonderfully to
her touch? Where had she found such quaint, dainty music, simple
as the old-fashioned dance itself, so that the little ones could
keep time to it, and yet pleasing Van Berg's fastidious ear with
its unhackneyed and refined melody. But the marked and marvellous
feature in her playing was an airy rolicksomeness that was as
irresistible as a panic. Old ladies' heads began to bob over their
fancy work most absurdly. Two quartets of elderly gentlemen at
whist were evidently beginning to play badly, their feet meantime
tapping the floor in a most unwonted manner.
"Were I as dead as Julius Caesar I could not resist that quickstep,"
cried Stanton; and he rushed over to his aunt, Mrs. Mayhew, and
dragged her into line.
"What in the name of all the witches of Salem has got into that
piano!" cried Mr. Burleigh, bursting into the parlor from the
office, with his pen stuck behind his ear, and his hair brushed
up perpendicularly. "There's sorcery in the air. I'm practised
upon--Keep still? No, not if I was nailed up in one of the
soldier's 'wooden overcoats.
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