"So I got a lot of pepper, and one day when Polly was going to sweep I
scattered it around the house. I rubbed it well into the carpets."
He scraped his foot over the floor to show me just how he did it. For
the moment he looked about ten years old.
"I rubbed it in quite hard. It didn't show. Nobody could tell that
there was anything wrong until she began to sweep. Well, Rhoda, if you
could have heard her sneeze, it would have done you good. She sneezed
for hours. At first they thought that Polly had a new kind of sickness.
They went flying for the doctor; but my mother had noticed me laugh, and
she pounced on me. She shook the truth out of me."
He trembled with laughter at the recollection.
"But what did they do to you, granddad?" I asked, breathlessly.
Sometimes his story would have an anticlimax.
"They put me down in the big black cellar," he declared, impressively.
I rubbed my head against his shoulder. I felt that I could never have
treated him in that way if I had been his mother.
"Poor granddad," I said, in a consoling whisper. "They were not good to
you!"
He puffed out his cheeks, and his eyes shone.
"That depends," he said, cheerfully. "I didn't mind, bless you. We lived
in the country, and they kept their pies in the cellar."
"Yes?" I questioned, eagerly.
"That night when they took stock they were short three pies."
"Oh!" I gasped.
I gazed at him in indecision. He looked back at me quite gravely, save
for a lurking twinkle in his eye.
"Did you eat them, granddad?" I asked, confidentially.
He nodded.
"And twenty doughnuts," he said.
I regarded him with deep admiration. What a dreadful bad boy dear
granddad had been!
I used often to wish that Madame Tomaso had granddad to deal with. I
did not think that she would be so cross, or, at least, she would not
show it so openly. She had a trick of frowning until her eyebrows grew
together in one thick, black line. She would frown and beat time, and I
would chase after her on the piano, with a blur before my eyes, and my
heart in my mouth. Sometimes we arrived at a bar together, both out of
breath; sometimes she left me far behind, very weak and miserable, with
stumbling fingers which refused to hurry. She always beat time with a
large black fan, and when the chase proved exhaustive, she would open
the fan, and fan herself even in the depth of winter. While she fanned
herself she would say things to me, unkind things.
Once she told me about her other pupils.
"I have ten," she said, "ten little girls. Some of them do not make
good music. _I rap them over the fingers with my fan!_"
She went on for quite awhile relating long stories of raps inflicted
upon helpless little girls, some of whom had actually been saucy to her,
and some of whom had merely played false notes like myself. A much
larger girl than I had been rapped that very morning for false notes,
and had cried! Afterwards she had played a great deal better.
I listened in growing terror. I wondered if she were trying to frighten
me. Then suddenly I glanced up at my great-grandfather's picture.
The parlor walls were hung with the pictures of men who had borne my
name. Most of them had preached, but some had fought; and he, my
great-grandfather, who looked down over the piano, had preached with a
sword in his hand. All the Harcourts had been brave men. They had never
been afraid of anything. And on the other side there was granddad
Lawrence, whose courage no one could possibly question. He would not
have stood this when he was a boy. Just think of Polly!
Something inside of me seemed to awake. I turned and faced her, ogress
though she was.
"You'll never rap mine," I said, steadily. "Never! I am bad! I am a
Hottentot!"
I made a horrid face at her, such as a Hottentot might be supposed to
have.
For the first and only time in the course of our acquaintance she
laughed. She laughed as if she would die, while I sat on my sofa pillow
and watched her. During the rest of the lesson she was remarkably
friendly.
My mother was much pleased with the progress that I made. She often
spoke of Madame Tomaso's method, and of how brilliantly her little
pupils played. My mother had never heard of raps. All the family were
encouraging in their comments, and they, also, set me a shining example.
My mother rubbed up her musical knowledge, and even my grandmother would
steal into the parlor in the early twilight, and play some Old World
melody which held within its tune the hurry of dancing feet. All these I
was to learn some day, when my fingers had grown as strong as my desire.
I played better and better for the admiring circle, until Madame Tomaso
herself would have been astonished if she could have heard me.
"She really does quite well," my father said one night. "It almost
sounds like a tune. Is it 'Yankee Doodle,' or 'Old Dog Tray'?"
"Neither!" my mother cried, warmly. "I don't know exactly what it is
myself, but it is probably something classic. And she is doing it
beautifully!"
"It is 'Yankee Doodle,' mother," I said, in a whisper.
She did not hear me. She was looking at the piano with sad eyes.
"They have taken an awful lot out of it," she said. "It was the first
thing that we bought after we were married!"
"Was it?" my father inquired, briskly. "I thought we bought the
coffee-pot first. Didn't we fry eggs in the coffee-pot?"
My mother gave him a startled glance.
"We did fry eggs in a coffee-pot," she admitted, reluctantly. "At least
_you_ fried them. I did not know how."
"Somehow eggs don't taste as good now-a-days as those did," my father
said, musingly. "I wonder if it was the coffee-pot."
Grandmother leant over my shoulder, and examined the piano cover.
"What made that, Rhoda?" she demanded, pointing to a broad streak which
ran through the plush.
"That is where Madame Tomaso beats time," I answered, meekly.
They looked at one another.
"She is such an excellent teacher," my mother said, apologetically,
"that I suppose I ought not to complain. It's very good of her to take
so much trouble. Just as soon as they are large enough, she shall teach
the twins, too."
"Oh, no, mother!" I cried, quickly.
"Why not, Rhoda?"