was. I
don't believe she can play a single note."

"What do you suppose happened to me last winter?" Mrs. Bates went on.
"I had the greatest set-back of my life. I asked to join the Amateur
Musical Club. They wouldn't let me in."

"Why not?"

"Well, I played before their committee, and then the secretary wrote
me a note. It was a nice enough note, of course, but I knew what it
meant. I see now well enough that my fingers _were_ rather stiffer
than I realized, and that my 'Twinkling Sprays' and 'Fluttering
Zephyrs' were not quite up to date. They wanted Grieg and Lassen and
Chopin. 'Very well,' said I, 'just wait.' Now, I never knuckle under.
I never give up. So I sent right out for a teacher. I practiced scales
an hour a day for weeks and months. Granger thought I was crazy. I
tackled Grieg and Lassen and Chopin,--yes, and Tschaikowsky, too. I'm
going to play for that committee next month. Let me see if they'll
dare to vote me out again!"

"Oh, _that's_ it!" thought Jane. She was beginning to feel desirous of
meting out exact and even-handed justice. She found it impossible to
withhold respect from so much grit and determination.

"But your father liked those old-time things, and so did all the other
young men." Mrs. Bates creased and folded the end of one of her long
sleeves, and seemed lapsing into a retrospective mood. "Why, some
evenings they used to sit two deep around the room to hear me do the
'Battle of Prague.' Do you know the 'Java March'?" she asked suddenly.

"I'm afraid not," Jane was obliged to confess.

"Your father always had a great fondness for that. I don't know," she
went on, after a short pause, "whether you understand that your father
was one of my old beaux--at least, I always counted him with the rest.
I was a gay girl in my day, and I wanted to make the list as long as I
could; so I counted in the quiet ones as well as the noisy ones. Your
father was one of the quiet ones."

"So I should have imagined," said Jane. Her maiden delicacy was just a
shade affrighted at the turn the talk was taking.

"When I was playing he would sit there by the hour and never say a
word. My banner piece was really a fantasia on 'Sonnambula'--a new
thing here; I was the first one in town to have it. There were
thirteen pages, and there was always a rush to see who should turn
them. Your father didn't often enter the rush, but I really liked his
way of turning the best of any. He never turned too soon or to