"One wouldn't expect it from Flossie Taylor!" said Honor contemptuously, as she hurried off to her music lesson.
I am afraid Honor's scales that day were anything but a satisfaction to Fräulein Bernhardt, the piano teacher. Her mind was so abstracted that she kept continually playing wrong fingering, or even an occasional wrong note in the harmonic minors. Her study was little better, and her piece a dead failure. The mistress, with characteristic German patience, set her to work to try to conquer a couple of difficult phrases, through which Honor stumbled again and again, each time with the same old mistakes, until the end of the half-hour.
"I find you not yet fit to take share in ze evening pairformance!" sighed poor Fräulein, whose musical ear had been much distressed by this mangling of her favourite tarantella. "Zere must be more of improvement before ve render ze piece to Mees Maitland. You say you not vish to play in publique? Ach, so! Zat is vat zey all say; but it is good to begin young to get over ze fear—vat you call ze 'shyness'—is it not so?"
Fräulein Bernhardt was an excellent teacher—patient, conscientious, and enthusiastic. She tried to inspire all her pupils with her own love for music, and with some indeed she succeeded, though with others it proved a more difficult task.
"I'm almost impossible!" avowed Lettice Talbot. "I believe I'm nearly as bad as the old fellow who declared he only knew two tunes—one was 'God Save the King', and the other wasn't."
"You certainly have a particularly leaden touch," agreed Dorothy Arkwright. "The way you hammer out Mendelssohn is enough to try my nerves, so I'm sure it must be an offence to Fräulein."
"I think it's stupid to be obliged to learn the piano when you've absolutely no taste for it," yawned Lettice. "I'm going to ask Father to let me give it up next term."
"Don't!" interposed Vivian Holmes, who happened to overhear Lettice's remark. "I went through that same phase myself, when I was fourteen. I implored my mother to allow me to stop music, and she had nearly consented when I met a lady who advised me most strongly to go on. She said she couldn't play herself, and regretted it immensely now she was grown-up, and would be thankful if she could manage even a hymn tune. So I did go on, and now I'm very glad. I'm certain you'll like it better, Lettice, when you've got over more of the drudgery."
"Perhaps it will never be anything but drudgery for me!"
"Oh, yes, it will! We shall have you taking part in the 'Friday firsts' yet."