Child Of Music by Mary Burchell Page A

underrates her niece's gifts, and there seems little sympathy between them. But of course one doesn't want to bring personalities into these matters.'
    'Of course not,' agreed the professor, but rather regretfully, as though he would have enjoyed a little gossip at that point.
    Sounds of other arrivals were heard just then, however, and into the room came Oscar Warrender, preceded by his wife.
    Once more Anthea Warrender looked so engagingly like the Anthea Benton Felicity remembered from her student days that the years seemed to fall away, and she watched smiling while Stephen Tarkman welcomed his distinguished guests. Then Anthea turned, saw Felicity and cried,
    'Felicity Grainger ! I don't believe it! Where did you find her, Stephen?' She kissed Felicity warmly and, still holding one of her hands, turned to her husband. 'Oscar, you remember Felicity? She and I roomed together at Mrs. McManus's when we were students.'
    Felicity could think of no reason why Oscar War render should remember her, and she shrewdly suspected that he couldn't either. But he greeted her with a touch of the famous charm which he used when he wanted to be specially nice to a friend or unpleasant to an enemy, and the talk became general.
    Within the next few minutes other guests arrived — mostly connected in some way with the Foundation or local friends of Stephen Tarkman, Felicity judged. Then dinner was announced and she found she was seated between Professor Blackthorn and an engaging young man called Edgar Inglis , who turned out to be Warrender's private secretary.
    'You must have stamina!' she remarked, regarding him with slightly envious interest. 'Isn't it rather a hectic life?'
    'Unbelievably so,' he agreed. 'But never dull, except when the fan-mail gets knee-deep. It's the life for me. It would kill me — although I'm remarkably tough — to have regular hours and some fool of a union man telling me which part of the job was mine and which wasn't.'
    'How would you define your job exactly?' she asked, intrigued. 'Apart from the actual secretarial work, I mean?'
    'I couldn't,' he assured her cheerfully. 'It varies from travel agent to psychiatrist, from father confessor to court jester.'
    'And you mean to say Mr. Warrender really requires all that?'
    'Oh, he doesn't. He's the most self-sufficient creature I ever came across. But one's inevitably involved with all the people who surround one's boss. And if he happens to be an international stage figure and a driving force in the musical world they include agents, managers, fans, pensioners, adorers, haters, fellow artists — both talented and dud-ambitious mums, self-deluded amateurs, jealous old pros — oh, the lot!'
    'And how,' inquired Felicity with real interest, 'does Anthea make out in all this?'
    'Anthea? Oh—' his mischievous smile softened slightly — 'she's our guardian angel, good fairy, or whatever else of the kind you like to call her. I tell you — if she wanted me to, I'd lie down on the ground and let her walk over me. But fortunately, she isn't given that way,' he added lightly. 'The only one she ever walks over — very occasionally — is Warrender.'
    'She can do that?'' Felicity was impressed.
    'Only for his own good,' Edgar Inglis assured her with a grin.
    After dinner, when the company moved back into the other room, Anthea found the opportunity to come and talk to Felicity and to ask what she had done since they had last seen each other at her own dinner-party three years ago.
    'It's I who should be asking you that,' Felicity declared with a laugh. 'You are the one who has done the interesting things. What is it like to be a famous singer in your own right and married to the greatest conductor in the world?'
    'Heaven, with an occasional dash of hell,' said Anthea succinctly. 'But I truly want to know about you. What's this about your coming to teach at Tarkmans?'
    'Who told you that?' Felicity demanded.
    'Stephen, of course.'
    'As a settled thing?' She looked