Then a sterner truth appeared. He’d gone to the monthly band concert at the academy. Mary went ahead, of course, because she had to be there for tuning up, and there was no specific understanding that he’d wait for her afterward. He was in the twelfth row of the audience and Mary was in the fourth row of the band. Her wild red hair was partly plastered down—he’d lent her his own Sultan’s Pride liquid brilliantine—but an untamed swatch of it careened down over her left eye and David could see her other eye concentrated, as sparkling and proud as John Philip Sousa’s or Evangeline Booth’s, on the collapsible tin music stand in front of her. They never let Mary play solo cornet or even first or second cornet. An outrage, and no use pretending that it had nothing to do with being a newcomer fro
