The Middle Moffat Read Online Free Page A

Giant. And that Sylvie had planned to spend the day making paper flowers for the fair at the parish house. Goodness! She'd better see that Rufus stayed around in case she needed help. In the meanwhile she wished Mama would go somewhere, for it was hard to make the kind of music that rocked the house with Mama saying all the time, "Oh, Jane, please! Don't make all that noise."
    At last, however, Mama put on her hat and gloves and went to town to buy the week's provisions. Then Jane tried crashing the music out on the organ for all she was worth.
    Rufus tore from the house bellowing, "Criminenty, Jane!" And he didn't come back until it was time for lunch.
    He really doesn't appreciate music,
thought Jane.
But then, he's awfully little,
she excused him.
    To tell the truth, though, Jane herself was far from satisfied with her playing. Even with no one around she could not get that swelling effect that she wanted. Also the right pedal had taken to giving a rasping gasp every time she brought her foot down on it. Feeling tired, Jane sat back and let the music thunder and swell only in her head. She decided not to practice anymore, but to keep the music in her head this way and then just crash it out at two o'clock.
    When Rufus came home for lunch, she asked him to help her with the chairs.
    "Who's coming?" he asked.
    "Well, I don't know yet. But probably plenty of people will, with that sign out there."
    Rufus helped Jane arrange the dining-room chairs in a semicircle. Then Jane picked some daisies in the lot across the street, and these she put in tall jelly glasses on the small hinged trays at either end of the organ. Next she put on her best white piqué dress. She begged Rufus to put on a clean sailor suit. This he absolutely refused to do. Saturday was Saturday.
    "Well, at least you can wash your face," begged Jane. Rufus did not want to do this, either, but Jane caught him with the washcloth and got the worst smudges off.
    Now it was nearly two o'clock. She had been so busy she had not been thinking about the music. She hoped it would swell through the house in the proper way, banging against people's eardrums. She wondered if there would be chairs enough for the audience. Supposing hundreds came, like at Woolsey Hall? If they did, they would have to sit on the long green lawn.
    The idea of hundreds coming made Jane suck in her breath. Stagestruck! That's what she was, stagestruck.
    She went to the window and lifted the curtain, hardly daring to look. Were the crowds arriving? No—nobody was coming. She should have made lots of signs and put them in store windows and on the bulletin board in front of the Town Hall. "Seated one day at the organ," she hummed.
    Nobody was going to come, she thought. But as she was thinking this, she saw Clara Pringle and her little brother, Brud. Clara looked at the sign on the tree and then straggled up the walk, dragging Brud along. Brud looked as though he had been crying. Tears were in his eyes.
    Jane met them at the door.
    "We come to the show," said Clara.
    "There isn't any show," said Jane. "This is goin' to be an organ recital."
    "All right then," said Clara, "here's my pins."
    She emptied a handful of pins into Janey's palm. In this neighborhood, ten pins or one cent was the usual price of admission.
    "Does he have to pay?" asked Clara, ¡jointing to Brud, who was standing there looking very miserable.
    "No," said Jane. "And neither do you. This is free. Like at Woolsey Hall. Did you ever have to pay to go there?" she asked scornfully, dropping the pins back into Clara's hand.
    "Never been," said Clara.
    Clara and Brud went into the parlor and sat down together in the big armchair. They squirmed around until they were comfortable and then pulled out their lollipops.
Imagine bringing lollipops to an organ recital!
thought Jane. Then there was a shuffling step on the porch. My goodness, the oldest inhabitant! The most important man in Cranbury! How nice of him to come! Jane couldn't say