“Ah! what with the beating and blowing above there, my father often does not hear the hour strike. He is too zealous with his pupils.”
Madam Anna Bach smiled good humoredly at the impatience of her favorite, and replied—“Take care your father does not hear you talk so. He would interpret it ill. He regrets often enough, already, that his daughters have no gift for music, while his sons have been skilled on the piano and the organ from their earliest childhood.”
Lina fixed her beautiful hazel eyes earnestly on her mother, and said with some petulance—“Yet my father, if he would be just, must acknowledge that we three girls give him more pleasure than all his sons, skilful musicians as they are!”
“Silence!” said her mother, gravely. “It does not become you to boast of your father’s regard, nor to accuse your brothers. Go to your sisters, and to work.”
Lina obeyed; but when at the door she turned suddenly round, ran back to her mother, seized her hand, kissed it affectionately, and said—“Be friends with me, mamma! I meant no harm by what I said.”
“That I well know,” replied Madam Bach; “you are a good girl, but you have not the quiet manners of your other sisters. You are hasty and vehement, like the brother you resemble in outward features—whom you always blame, because he has grieved your father, and yet whom you love better than all the rest.”
“Friedemann!” cried Lina, and threw herself sobbing into her mother’s arms. Then recovering herself, with a “I will be good, mamma!” she left the apartment.
Madam Bach, after speaking a moment with her youngest son, Christian, was about to follow, when the door opened and her excellent husband, Johann Sebastian, entered. He was still a stately and handsome man, of steady carriage, and eyes that beamed with the brilliancy of youth; but thirteen years had considerably changed him; deep furrows were in the once open and smooth forehead; his cheeks were fallen in, and their color betrayed disease.
“Is your lesson over?” asked his wife.
Sebastian held out his hand affectionately, and answered—“Yes, for to-day.” He placed himself in his arm-chair, and Madam Bach continued—