After all, why should she add to her other real disappointments by taking this absurd creature seriously?
"In what way ?" she returned, with a half smile.
"To play.

On the piano, of course.

There isn't one nearer here than Sacramento; but I reckon we could get a small one by Thursday.

You couldn't do anything on a banjo ?" he added doubtfully; "Kearney's got one." "I imagine it would be very difficult to carry a piano over those mountains," said Christie laughingly, to avoid the collateral of the banjo.
"We got a billiard-table over from Stockton," half bashfully interrupted Dick Mattingly, struggling from his end of the trunk to recover his composure, "and it had to be brought over in sections on the back of a mule, so I don't see why--" He stopped short again in confusion, at a sign from his brother, and then added, "I mean, of course, that a piano is a heap more delicate, and valuable, and all that sort of thing, but it's worth trying for." "Fairfax was always saying he'd get one for himself, so I reckon it's possible," said Joe.
"Does he play ?" asked Christie.
"You bet," said Joe, quite forgetting himself in his enthusiasm.

"He can snatch Mozart and Beethoven bald-headed." In the embarrassing silence that followed this speech the fringe of pine wood nearest the flat was reached.