He did not ask any more questions, but he looked at me, keenly. He
slipped his hand under my chin, and forced me to meet his eyes. I could
never hide my thoughts from anybody. And granddad was always so horribly
sharp! He chuckled a little as he gazed at me. When he went away he made
me draw largely on the bank, and he patted me on the head.
"Keep up your courage," he whispered. "You're game!"
Out in the hall I heard him ask my mother a sudden question.
"When does Madame Tomaso come again?" he inquired, suavely.
It was always on Tuesdays that Madame Tomaso came, and it was strange
how Tuesdays raced around. That Tuesday, in particular, arrived almost
in a moment while I was still thinking. But I had made my preparations.
"You are very careless about the casters, Norah," my mother said at
breakfast. "There is actually no pepper on the table."
"But I filled them last night, ma'am!" Norah cried, staring.
It seemed to me that they all turned and looked at me. I slipped from
the room in a hurry. Somehow I felt so queer that morning. I kept
sighing, and when the door-bell rang I would get quite cold all over. It
rang a great many times before Madame Tomaso came, fresh and alert from
her walk, with an air of friendliness which was always sure to disappear
later. She turned cross very early that day, even before she had taken
off her things.
"I have been too lenient with you, little Miss," she told me, in an
awful voice. "We will try a new method."
She seated herself by the piano, and folded her arms. I sat perched on
my cushion, and stared at her in fascination. Oh, how I wished that I
had let the pepper alone! Oh, how I wished that I was good! After all
it was so pleasant to be good.
"Play," she said, in a masterful manner. "I will be an audience. I will
be a great many mens and womens. We will listen to you."
I played. It was very terrible. Her eyebrows grew together. That was the
way she would look when she found me out, only worse, much worse. I
played faster. She watched my notes, and sometimes she would moan,
feebly, as if something hurt her. I played on faster still, one
trembling little hand racing ahead of the other, until musical flesh and
blood could stand it no longer. She began to count with a shout.
"One, two, three, four!" she cried, and brought the fan down on the
piano cover.
Then she sneezed.
"I knew it," she murmured, grimly, to herself. "I felt it coming on
this morning!"
She counted again and sneezed, and I sneezed a little myself in a
hurried, guilty way. She looked at me with sudden suspicion. She was
sharp, almost as sharp as granddad. In a second she had lifted the piano
cover, and found a pile of pepper under that well-worn spot. The things
which she said were awful. She said them in three or four languages, and
she said them in such a high voice that my mother and grandmother came
running in alarm. She pointed at me, with a shaking finger.
"Look at your child," she cried. "She lays traps for me! Pepper traps!"
"Rhoda!" my mother exclaimed.
My grandmother seemed stricken dumb.