The Middle Moffat Read Online Free

She wanted to give the organ recitals herself. "Seated one day at the organ," she hummed. That's what Sylvie was playing now. Sylvie was the best player of all the four Moffats. There was no doubt about it. Perhaps Sylvie was the one who should give the organ recitals. But when did Sylvie ever have time? Choir rehearsals, plays at the Town Hall, her dances, her friends, her diary, drawing! All these things took up Sylvie's time. She was hardly ever at home.
    Maybe it would not take Janey long, a few days, say, to catch up with Sylvie and play as well as she. What Janey wanted in the organ recitals was loud notes, one running into the next, that would almost shake the house down. She did not want the drowsy kind that nearly put you to sleep, like the droning of insects on a hot afternoon.
    Excitement over the organ continued for some days, and it reached its peak the following Saturday. That was the day that Janey decided to give her first organ recital. All during the week she had become more and more entranced with this idea. She decided to give the recital herself and she told no one about it, for she meant it to be a surprise to the rest of the family. She had first planned to give the organ recital on Sunday, which would give her another day to practice, but when she heard that Mr. Julius Sampson was giving one himself that day at Woolsey Hall, she changed her day to Saturday. She would not wish to take away any of his audience. So Saturday was to be the day. Janey tried to keep the music thundering and crashing through her mind, the way she remembered it had done at Woolsey Hall. The trouble was that whenever she tried to practice that way, Mama would call out from the kitchen, "Janey, play softly, please!"
    But another real drawback was that Jane simply did not have the time to practice. Rufus and Joey were still just as eager to play the organ as she was, and they all three wanted to play at the same time. Jane and Joe got tired of pumping for Rufus. However, he cleverly learned to play standing up, while pumping with one foot.
    Rufus could always outwit his short legs. He had learned to ride Joey's bike by sticking one leg under the crossbar to the far pedal. The oldest inhabitant saw him riding this way one day and exclaimed, "My, what an extraordinary sense of balance this fellow has!"

    Mama said Rufus would break the organ, but Rufus loved playing so much he wouldn't stop.
    So Saturday morning came without Janey having had a great deal of time at the organ. But whenever she thought of the way the music sounded in Woolsey Hall, she was confident it would sound as well in the Moffats' green-and-white parlor. She made a sign in large red crayon letters: "Organ Recital at two o'clock by
one of the Moffats
." She did not say
by Jane Moffat,
because she thought that if she got scared she would persuade Rufus to play, as he was such an odd sight, standing and pumping with one foot and playing "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." That is all Rufus could play, but he could play that like lightning. She nailed the sign to the porch.
    "What does that say?" asked Rufus curiously.
    "This says organ recital at two o'clock," said Jane.
    "Oh," said Rufus, not in the least surprised. "Well, who's going to see that sign way back here?"
    That's right,
thought Jane,
who could see it?
The Moffats' house was set so far back from the street that no one passing by could see the sign. So she took it down and tied it to the large elm tree in front of their long green lawn. After this, Jane chased Rufus away from the organ for the rest of the morning so she could practice. She was firm about it.
    "Rufus, go away," she said. "After the recital this afternoon you can have the organ for all the rest of the day."
    However, she remembered she might need him; so she added, "But don't go far, you ought to be here for the recital 'cause I'm your sister."
    She was a little disturbed to find that Joey had already gone on an all-day hike out to the Sleeping