Rossiter and seemed
a little cold in manner.
Ordinarily, after working hard all day while the daylight lasted
they much preferred an evening of complete solitude. Rossiter's new
robustness of taste included love of a gramophone. Money being no
consideration with them, they acquired a tip-top one with
superlative records; not so much the baaing, bellowing and shrieking
of fashionable singers, but orchestral performances, heart-melting
duets between violin and piano (_what_ human voice ever came up to a
good violin or violoncello?), racy comic songs, inspiriting two
steps, xylophone symphonies, and dreamy, sensuous waltzes. This
gramophone Linda learnt to work; and while Michael read voraciously
the works of Hunter, Hugh Owen Thomas, Stromeyer, Duchenne, Goodsir,
Wolff, and Redfern on bones, muscles, ligaments, tendons, cartilage,
periosteum and osteogenesis--or, more often, Keith's compact and
lucid analysis of their experiments and conclusions--Linda let loose
in the scented air of a log fire these varied melodies which attuned
the mind to extraordinary perceptibility.
The little Adamses were allowed to steal in and listen, on condition
they never uttered a word to break the spell of Colonel Rossiter's
thoughts.
I think also Rossiter felt his wife had been unjustly snubbed by the
great ladies and the off-hand, harum-scarum young war-workers; so he
flatly declined to have any of them messing around his studio or
initiated into his research work.
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