Clara paid great attention to her book, and soon learnt to read and spell with propriety.
“I can read now,” said she to Miss Melville, “will you teach me to play?”
“Willingly; and I hope you will have patience to surmount every difficulty.”
“Is music so very difficult to learn?” said Clara.
“Yes,” answered Miss Melville, “if you mean to excel; and I hope that will be your endeavour: many pretend to play, who only know how to gingle the keys; but I hope, if you begin, you will be more than a pretender.”
As this was a science in which Clara particularly delighted, she made a very rapid progress, as indeed she did in every thing she undertook; but unfortunately she had many bad habits, as well as real errors, from which it was necessary she should be reformed. Among the most prominent of these was the vice of lying.—The following anecdote will shew some of its effects.
Among those things upon which Miss Melville set the highest value, were the letters of her deceased parents, which she kept locked up in a trunk, and would often retire to read them in private. She had miniatures of her parents, which were kept in the same place.
One day Clara caught her with the picture of her mother in her hand, weeping over it. Unwilling the child should see her in tears, she hastily returned the miniature to its place, locked the box, and came away.
Clara related what she had seen to her mother, who, with a curiosity natural to little minds, was eager to discover the secret into which her daughter was unable to penetrate.