"Stevenson_Markheim" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stevenson Robert Louis)

"I shall catch butterflies," said her companion; "and I too shall lie
among the dear old pines."

"Just as you please," she said; and at that moment the /table d'hote/
bell rang.

The little girl hastened to the bureau, and spoke rapidly in German to
the cashier.

"/Ach, Fraulein/!" he said. "You are not really serious?"

"Yes, I am," she said. "I don't want them to know my name. It will
only worry me. Say I am the young lady who tuned the piano."

She had scarcely given these directions and mounted to her room when
Oswald Everard, who was much interested in his mysterious companion,
came to the bureau, and asked for the name of the little lady.

"/Es ist das Fraulein welches das Piano gestimmt hat/," answered the
man, returning with unusual quickness to his account-book.

No one spoke to the little girl at /table d'hote/, but for all that
she enjoyed her dinner, and gave her serious attention to all the
courses. Being thus solidly occupied, she had not much leisure to
bestow on the conversation of the other guests. Nor was it specially
original; it treated of the short-comings of the chef, the
tastelessness of the soup, the toughness of the beef, and all the many
failings which go to complete a mountain hotel dinner. But suddenly,
so it seemed to the little girl, this time-honoured talk passed into
another phase; she heard the word "music" mentioned, and she became at
once interested to learn what these people had to say on a subject
which was dearer to her than any other.

"For my own part," said a stern-looking old man, "I have no words to
describe what a gracious comfort music has been to me all my life. It
is the noblest language which man may understand and speak. And I
sometimes think that those who know it, or know something of it, are
able at rare moments to find an answer to life's perplexing problems."

The little girl looked up from her plate. Robert Browning's words rose
to her lips, but she did not give them utterance:

God has a few of us whom He whispers in the ear;
The rest may reason, and welcome; 'tis we musicians know.

"I have lived through a long life," said another elderly man, "and
have therefore had my share of trouble; but the grief of being obliged
to give up music was the grief which held me longest, or which perhaps
has never left me. I still crave for the gracious pleasure of touching
once more the strings of the violoncello, and hearing the dear, tender