When Minerva heard that she was coming up she clapped her hands and said,
“My-oh-my! I’m glad to hear she’s comin’. Now we will have music.”
She meant piano music, for Miss Paxton did not sing. But we had no piano.
I had not thought it worth while to get one, because Ethel, while very fond of music and with a cultivated taste for it, is not able to play. Her father thought that so many people now-a-days play the piano badly, that it was just as well not to play it at all, and he would never hear of her taking lessons.
As Miss Paxton was only going to be up a week, it did not seem to be worth while sending to Springfield for a piano. I did not know at the time that there was a wareroom in Egerton.
We talked it over, Ethel and I, and we came to the conclusion that we would help Cherry to enjoy herself without music—unless she should show an unexpected predilection for the accordeon, in which case we had no doubt that Minerva would lend her her instrument.
Cherry was coming on a Saturday, and we were to drive to Egerton to meet her.
Friday afternoon we went to call on Mrs. Hartlett, an old lady, who was in her hundredth year, and in almost complete possession of her faculties.
I feel that I owe it to Mrs. Hartlett to give some account of our visit to her, although the real object of this chapter is to tell what was happening during our absence from home.
Mrs. Hartlett was a widow, her husband having died eighty-one years before.