"Aunt Clara. Isn't she a peach? She's fine." He wanted to keep talking, too, it was obvious. "She brought me up, you know." He laughed boyishly. "Not that I'd want you to hold that against her, or anything like that!"
"Oh, she'll live that down!" said Susan.
That was all. But when Peter Colernan went on his way a moment later he was still smiling, and Susan walked to her desk on air.
The office seemed a pleasant place to be that afternoon. Susan began her work with energy and interest, the light falling on her bright hair, her fingers flying. She hummed as she worked, and one or two other girls hummed with her.
There was rather a musical atmosphere in Front Office; the girls without exception kept in touch with the popular music of the day, and liked to claim a certain knowledge of the old classics as well. Certain girls always hummed certain airs, and no other girl ever usurped them. Thus Thorny vocalized the "Spring Song," when she felt particularly cheerful, and to Miss Violet Kirk were ceded all rights to Carmen's own solos in "Carmen." Susan's privilege included "The Rosary" and the little Hawaiian fare-well, "Aloha aoi." After the latter Thorny never failed to say dreamily, "I love that song!" and Susan to mutter surprisedly, "I didn't know I was humming it!"
All the girls hummed the Toreador's song, and the immediate favorites of the hour, "Just Because She Made Those Goo-Goo Eyes," and "I Don't Know Why I Love You but I Do," and "Hilee-Hilo" and "The Mosquito Parade." Hot discussions as to the merits of various compositions arose, and the technique of various singers.
"Yes, Collamarini's dramatic, and she has a good natural voice," Miss Thornton would admit, "but she can't get AT it."
Or, "That's all very well," Miss Cottle would assert boldly, "but Salassa sings better than either Plancon or de Reszke. I'm not saying this myself, but a party that KNOWS told me so."
"Probably the person who told you so had never heard them," Miss Thornton would say, bringing the angry color to Miss Cottle's face, and the angry answer: "Well, if I could tell you who it IS, you'd feel pretty small!"
Susan had small respect for the other girls' opinions, and almost as little for her own. She knew how ignorant she was. But she took to herself what credit accrued to general quoting, quoting from newspapers, from her aunt's boarders, from chance conversations overheard on the cars.