What a mastery of the piano Marise had, subduing it to the slender pipe of those child-voices as long as they sang, and rolling out sumptuous harmonies in the intervals of the song.  Lucky kids!  Lucky kids! to have childhood memories like that.

He heard Paul say, “Now let’s sing ‘Massa’s in the cold, cold ground,’” and Elly shriek out, “No, Mother, no! It’s so terribly sad!  I can’t stand it!” And Paul answer with that certainty of his always being in the right, “Aw, Elly, it’s not fair.  Is it, Mother, fair to have Elly keep us from singing one of the nicest songs we have, just because she’s so foolish?”

His father frowned.  Queer about Paul.  He’d do anything for Elly if he thought her in trouble, would stand up for her against the biggest bully of the school-yard.  But he couldn’t keep himself from . . . it was perhaps because Paul could not understand that . . . now how could Marise meet this little problem in family equity, he wondered?  Her solutions of the children’s knots always tickled him.

She was saying, “Let’s see.  Elly, it doesn’t look to me as though you had any right to keep Paul from singing a song he likes.  And, Paul, it doesn’t seem as though you had any right to make Elly listen to a song that makes her cry.  Let’s settle it this way.  We can’t move the piano, but we can move Elly.  Elly dear, suppose you go ’way out through the kitchen and shut both doors and stand on the back porch.  Toucle will probably be there, looking out, the way she does evenings, so you won’t be alone.  I’ll send Mark out to get you when we’re through.  And because it’s not very much fun to stand out in the dark, you can stop and get yourself a piece of cocoanut cake as you go through the pantry.”

Neale laughed silently to himself as he heard the doors open and shut and Elly’s light tread die away.  How perfectly Marise understood her little daughter!  It wasn’t only over the piano that Marise had a mastery, but over everybody’s nature.  She played on them as surely, as richly as on any instrument.  That’s what he called real art-in-life.  Why wasn’t it creative art, as much as anything, her Blondin-like accuracy of poise among all the conflicting elements of family-life, the warring interests of the different temperaments, ages, sexes, natures?  Why wasn’t it an artistic creation, the unbroken happiness and harmony she drew out of those elements, as much as the picture the painter drew out of the reds and blues and yellows on his palette?  If it gave an actor a high and disinterested pleasure when he had an inspiration, or heard himself give out a true and freshly found intonation, or make exactly the right gesture, whether anybody in the audience applauded him or not, why wouldn’t the mother of a family and maker of a home have the same pleasure, and by heck! just as high and disinterested, when she had once more turned the trick, had an inspiration, and found a course that all her charges, young and old, could steer together?  Well, there was one, anyhow, of Marise’s audience who often gave her a silent hand-clap of admiration.