Ellen looked up brightly. “Oh, Mr. Todd, isn’t this nice!” she cried. “You’ve brought your violin. Are you going to play for us?”
“Why, no, that isn’t exactly what I came for,” he explained. “I thought maybe you would like me to lend you this and permit me to help you with it once in a while.”
“But——” Ellen looked apprehensively at her cousin. “It’s very kind of you,” she went on hesitatingly.
“I don’t know that I approve of Ellen wasting her time with a fiddle,” objected Miss Rindy. “What good would it do her?”
“It would be perhaps a pleasure,” answered Mr. Todd gently.
“Fiddle-dee-dee! Pleasure, indeed! Ellen and I can’t afford useless pleasures. She will have her living to make, and it’s dollars to doughnuts she will never make it twanging a fiddle. Besides, I don’t know that I could stand hearing the thing squeaking out scales.”
Mr. Todd’s clear blue eyes met Ellen’s hazel ones. “Music might not be such a bad profession for her,” he said reflectively. “She may have a very good voice and—— Do you know anything at all about the piano, child? Have you ever had any lessons?” He turned to Ellen.
“Oh, yes, I studied with Mother.”
“Good! Then what about the organ, Rindy? She could practice in the church, I am sure, and who knows but some day she could take my place, unless, indeed, she could do better, which would not be a difficult matter.”
“Now that sounds sensible,” returned Miss Rindy with satisfaction. “I don’t want to stand in the child’s light when it comes to practical matters, but I don’t want her to waste her time, fritter away her youth in a perfectly useless way as so many young people do.”