I promised to try, and as I had taken lessons before, in three months I could play and sing "Should those fond hopes e'er forsake thee," tolerably well. But Mrs. Lane persisted in affirming that I had a dramatic talent, and as she supposed that I never should be an actress, I must bring it out in singing; so I persevered, and, thanks to her, improved so much that people said, when I was mentioned, "She sings."
The Moral Sciences went to Dr. Price, and he had a class of girls in Latin; but my only opportunity of going before him was at morning prayers and Wednesday afternoons, when we assembled in the hall to hear orations in Latin, or translations, and "pieces" spoken by the boys; and at the quarterly reviews, when he marched us backward and forward through the books we had conned, like the sharp old gentleman he was, notwithstanding his purblind eyes.
CHAPTER XVI.
I heard from home regularly; father, however, was my only correspondent. He stipulated that I should write him every other Saturday, if not more than a line; but I did more than that at first, writing up the events of the fortnight, interspersing my opinions of the actors engaged therein, and dwindling by degrees down to the mere acknowledgment of his letter. He read without comment, but now and then he asked me questions which puzzled me to answer.
"Do you like Mr. Morgeson?" he asked once.
"He is very attentive," I wrote back. "But so is Cousin Alice,—she is fond of me."
"You do not like Morgeson?" again.
"Are there no agreeable young men," he asked another time, "with Dr.
Price?"
"Only boys," I wrote—"cubs of my own age."
Among the first letters I received was one with the news of the death of my grandfather, John Morgeson. He had left ten thousand dollars for Arthur, the sum to be withdrawn from the house of Locke Morgeson & Co., and invested elsewhere, for the interest to accumulate, and be added to the principal, till he should be of age. The rest of his property he gave to the Foreign Missionary Society. "Now," wrote father, "it will come your turn next, to stand in the gap, when your mother and I fall back from the forlorn hope—life." This merry and unaccustomed view of things did not suggest to my mind the change he intimated; I could not dwell on such an idea, so steadfast a home-principle were father and mother. It was different with grandfathers and grandmothers, of course; they died, since it was not particularly necessary for them to live after their children were married.