THE FIFTH STRING
that evening. Mildred coaxed her father to accompany her to hear the violinist. Mr. Wallace was not fond of music; "it had been knocked out of him on the farm up in Vermont, when he was a boy," he would apologetically explain, and besides he had the old puritanical abhorrence of stage people—putting them all in one class—as puppets who danced or played or talked for an idle and unthinking public.
So it was with the thought of a wasted evening that he accompanied Mildred to the concert.
The entertainment was a repetition of the others Diotti had given, and at its end, Mildred said to her father: "Come, I want to congratulate Signor Diotti in person."
"That is entirely unnecessary," he replied.
"It is my desire," and the girl led
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