"Indeed you ought, Marion," exclaimed Florence; "it's a shame that a girl who can write such compositions as you can, when you have a mind to, should hand in such a flat, silly thing as your last one was. I'm not complimentary, I know, but it's the truth; you know yourself it was horrible."
"Yes, I know it was; and that is why I'm particularly anxious to have a good one this time; don't you see?"
"But don't you think you will be able to get up to Aunt Bettie's before Saturday?" asked Florence; "it seems hard to keep her in suspense."
"I really don't see how I can find time, and then I'm in hopes that if I wait, by that time the answer to that woman's letter will have come, and I shall hear something decisive from mamma."
"Well, I think after all perhaps it will be better for you to wait until then. But do you know it is after four o'clock, and the girls have all got through practising? We ought to go down and try our duet."
"Sure enough!" exclaimed Marion, springing up. "I don't know my part at all; haven't looked at the last two pages, and Mr. Stein comes to-morrow."
"Oh, you read music so quickly, that you'll play your part better at sight than I shall after I've practised it a week. I wish I could read faster."
"Don't wish it, Flo; it is very nice sometimes, but I don't think people who read easily ever play readily without their notes. Now for you to know a piece once is to know it always, with or without your notes, while I have to fairly pound it into my head."
"There is more truth than poetry in that, I know," replied Florence, as the two went downstairs together, "for I have heard Aunt Sue complain of the same thing; nevertheless I wish I wasn't so awfully slow."
But we will leave them to their music, and musical discussions, and hurry on with our story.