grand and awful if the wind blew shreds and tatters of
storm-clouds across a purpling sky. All this was within Hester; but
without--

There had been but little room in Hester's life for music. Her days were
an endless round of dish-washing and baby-tending--first for her mother,
later for herself. There had been no money for music lessons, no time
for piano practice. Hester's childish heart had swelled with bitter envy
whenever she saw the coveted music roll swinging from some playmate's
hand. At that time her favorite "make-believe" had been to play at going
for a music lesson, with a carefully modeled roll of brown paper
suspended by a string from her fingers.

Hester was forty now. Two sturdy boys and a girl of nine gave her three
hungry mouths to feed and six active feet to keep in holeless stockings.
Her husband had been dead two years, and life was a struggle and a
problem. The boys she trained rigorously, giving just measure of love
and care; but the girl--ah, Penelope should have that for which she
herself had so longed. Penelope should take music lessons!

During all those nine years since Penelope had come to her, frequent
dimes and quarters, with an occasional half-dollar, had found their way
into an old stone jar on the top shelf in the pantry. It had been a
dreary and pinching economy that had made possible this horde of silver,
and its effects had been only too visible in Hester's turned and mended
garments, to say nothing of her wasted figure and colorless cheeks.
Penelope was nine now, and Hester deemed it a fitting time to begin the
spending of her treasured wealth.

First, the instrument: it must be a rented one, of course. Hester went
about the labor of procuring it in a state of exalted bliss that was in a
measure compensation for her long years of sacrifice.

Her task did not prove to be a hard one. The widow Butler, about to go
South for the winter, was more than glad to leave her piano in Hester's
tender care, and the dollar a month rent which Hester at first insisted
upon paying was finally cut in half, much to the widow Butler's
satisfaction and Hester's grateful delight. This much accomplished,
Hester turned her steps toward the white cottage wherein lived Margaret
Gale, the music teacher.

Miss Gale, careful, conscientious, but of limited experience, placed her
services at the disposal of all who could pay the price--thirty-five
cents an hour; and she graciously accepted the