“Ah,” replied Rebecca, “you forget when you was a little thing sitting playing against her frock with the prayer-book, and she singing to you. You can’t remember her when her curls was long like a piece of brown silk. You can’t remember her when she used to play and sing, before Lettie came and your father was——”
Rebecca turned and left the room. I went and peeped in the drawing-room. Mother sat before the little brown piano, with her plump, rather stiff fingers moving across the keys, a faint smile on her lips. At that moment Lettie came flying past me, and flung her arms round mother’s neck, kissing her and saying:
“Oh, my Dear, fancy my Dear playing the piano! Oh, Little Woman, we never knew you could!”
“Nor can I,” replied mother laughing, disengaging herself. “I only wondered if I could just strum out this old tune; I learned it when I was quite a girl, on this piano. It was a cracked one then; the only one I had.”
“But play again, dearie, do play again. It was like the clinking of lustre glasses, and you look so quaint at the piano. Do play, my dear!” pleaded Lettie.
“Nay,” said my mother, “the touch of the old keys on my fingers is making me sentimental—you wouldn’t like to see me reduced to the tears of old age?”
“Old age!” scolded Lettie, kissing her again. “You are young enough to play little romances. Tell us about it mother.”
“About what, child?”
“When you used to play.”
“Before my fingers were stiff with fifty odd years? Where have you been, Cyril, that you weren’t in to dinner?”