She told them all about it. She knew just why I had done it, and how I
had done it. She declared that she would never give me another lesson.
No, never! Her voice grew very loud in her denunciation, and the mild
words of shocked apology which my mother put in from time to time were
swept away in the torrent of her wrath. I saw my grandmother's lip curl,
and my mother look astonished. They were judging her by their own
standards of quiet reticence and womanly dignity. She was almost
justifying me.
Yet before she went she lodged an arrow in my mother's heart.
"As for the child's talent," she cried, and snapped her fingers. "It
would be as easy to teach her the tight-rope!"