The Argosy — page 324: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Margaret’s I*venzy. 303 We gave up going to drink coffee of an afternoon in the Hof Garten. The band there was all brass, and Margaret was mad after strings. We trailed to Symphony concerts till I was bored to death, and Margaret looked victimised in the picture-galleries where formerly we had spent such happy hours together. J began to rue the day that she decided to become famous, and a jealous hatred of the fiddle arose within me. It had already spoiled half my pleasure in Margaret’s society, and she grew daily more absorbed in the senseless thing. If relief did not come from some quarter soon, our friend- ship of years was likely to go to pieces. These superhuman labours began to tell on Margaret, after a while, and her teacher advised her to take a few weeks’ rest in the Tyrol. I gladly agreed to accompany her, and our preparations for the trip were quickly made. I was secretly in raptures at the thought of getting rid of my enemy the fiddle for awhile; but alas! I was doomed to disappointment. While arranging our hand luggage in as compact a form as possible, I learned that the violin was to accom- pany us. ‘But, Margaret, you need rest. Why not leave the violin here in safe hands, and return to it refreshed ?” I said, hypocritically. ‘‘T should lose in a week all I have toiled for through months,” she said, with a reproachful glance: and I demurred no longer. Margaret then began to solemnly roll the instrument of torture in a yard of flannel, cover it further with my blanket and an old silk handkerchief of generous dimensions, draw a green baize bag over the resplendent mahogany case, and fastening a pi “strap round the whole, declared it ready for its pase of My fears that the fiddle would be a marplot throughout our journey were not without foundation, and I soon realized that as a trip for rest and recreation, ours was turning out a failure. From the start Margaret bewildered and overwhelmed with admonitions every porter and railway official who laid hold of the baize bag with its precious contents, watching them with lynx eyes, and trotting along beside any in whose glance gleamed the unlawful fire of covetousness. At Rosenau there was a collision between the baize bag anda brass-nailed trunk, and a hole was stove in the side of the former. When Margaret found a big scratch on the mahogany case, she sat down on a truck and wept openly. As we were to tarry a few days at Rosenau, I begged my companion to have a stout box of common wood made for the fiddle to continue its journey in, and send the too magnificent receptacle back to Munich. To this she consented, and when we again set forth, the precious instrument reposed in a black pine box of gruesome shape. It was heavily and clumsily made, with a key as big as Mrs. Bluebeard’s ; it looked very like a small coffin; but it was cheap, and strong enough to resist any amount of ill-usage. We stopped a fortnight or more at Haidenfeld, in the southern COMiICOOoOKS.c© ()