Edna Ferber: Fanny Herself

6. CHAPTER SIX (continued)

"Bauer's?"

A pause. "Yes."

"Why?"

"I just stopped in there for a minute after the concert. I didn't mean to stay. And then Bauer introduced me around to everybody. And then they asked me to play, and--"

"And you played badly."

"Well, I didn't have my own violin."

"No football game Saturday. And no pocket money this week. Go to bed."

He went, breathing hard, and muttering a little under his breath. At breakfast next morning Fanny plied him with questions and was furious at his cool uncommunicativeness.

"Was it wonderful, Theodore? Did he play--oh--like an angel?"

"Played all right. Except the `Swan' thing. Maybe he thought it was too easy, or something, but I thought he murdered it. Pass the toast, unless you want it all."

It was not until the following autumn that Theodore went to New York. The thing that had seemed so impossible was arranged. He was to live in Brooklyn with a distant cousin of Ferdinand Brandeis, on a business basis, and he was to come into New York three times a week for his lessons. Mrs. Brandeis took him as far as Chicago, treated him to an extravagant dinner, put him on the train and with difficulty stifled the impulse to tell all the other passengers in the car to look after her Theodore. He looked incredibly grown up and at ease in his new suit and the hat that they had wisely bought in Chicago. She did not cry at all (in the train), and she kissed him only twice, and no man can ask more than that of any mother.