Kissing Kin by Elswyth Thane Page A

and then you can bear it.”
    “Jenny—” Camilla reached for her blindly, and Jenny’s warm hands closed over hers.
    “Yes, darling—Jenny’s here to sit it out with you, however long it takes. Want to cry on my shoulder?”
    But Camilla straightened, her jaw set. It was Calvert coming on top of this strange new confusion about Sosthène that made one so desperate, but one couldn’t talk about that to Jenny. It was needing Calvert more than ever because of Sosthène that made his wounding so much worse. It was the necessity to put Sosthène out of one’s mind that left those echoing empty spaces for fear to take root in and made one such a snivelling coward about Calvert….
    Camilla stood up abruptly and walked away from the sofa where Jenny sat.
    “I’ll be all right,” she said tightly. “It’s—a bit sudden—and I was tired to begin with—I’m sorry to be such a baby, I’ll get used to it pretty soon—”
    “We may get good news from Bracken sooner than you think,” said Jenny, and went to the gramophone in the cornerand dropped the needle on the record that lay there, without looking to see what it was, and the sparkle of a Chopin waltz danced out into the quiet room. Camilla listened, statue-still, staring at the fire, her face between her hands. And when the record ended, “More,” she said without moving, and heard Jenny turn the record. By the time the B Flat Mazurka dripped away into silence Camilla was able to look round at Jenny and smile.
    “That was my first grown-up piece,” she said. “There was a while when I was sick to death of it. Now I’ve come full circle and dearly love it again. It brings back all the old-time family parties at Williamsburg, when we each had to perform and show what we had learned since the last time. I remember how proud I was the first time I played that and got through it without tripping, and they all clapped and Cousin Sedgwick said ‘Bravo!’ and Mother mopped her eyes, I can’t think why, and Calvert winked at me because he’d said all along I could do it—”
    The brave, bright words faltered, and Jenny said quickly, “You don’t know how I envy you growing up in a big family like that, and how wonderful it seems to somebody like me that there can be a whole party, enough for dancing and music and applause, without ever going outside the family! Of course with us there is Uncle Ralph, that’s Father’s brother, and his wife, and their son Godfrey, he’s at Harrow now, but they live up in Leicestershire and we hardly ever see them—most of the time there’s only Father and me, and while we’re awfully good pals it’s not very many, is it! I mean, when I play to Father it sort of echoes, and he’d never dream of saying Bravo!”
    “Do you play Chopin?” Camilla asked with interest.
    “Oh, yes. The first one I learned was the one he did for the little dog, remember?”
    “The D Flat Waltz. Is there a record of that there?”
    “Don’t think so. But I’ll never forget how it goes.” Jenny snapped on a light over the grand piano and her fingersscampered into the gay little tune, imparting an impudent stress and exaggeration all their own, which drew Camilla to the bench beside her and they finished together in a dead run, with Camilla’s right hand an octave higher than Jenny’s, and broke into schoolgirl laughter.
    “And remember this one?” Jenny said then, slipping into a Nocturne, and Camilla said, “Yes, do go on,” and sat with her cheek against Jenny’s shoulder, listening till the end, when Jenny slid along the bench and said, “Now you play something new from America,” and Camilla played an Irving Berlin tune from The Century Girl, which she had seen with Dinah in New York before sailing. When that was finished Jenny said, “Have you seen the new show at Daly’s?” and played one of Miss José Collins’ songs from that and they sang it together, and Jenny said, “We’re pretty good, let’s give the boys at