All through this period, as through her struggles with the old “old” organ, Miss Hurley labored patiently. “I couldn't do so and so,” old Merkle used to tell her, “so you want to look out and not do so and so.” Perhaps it meant she must pump with one foot, or not touch some three or four of the “stops.” She did her best and, but for the rankling thought that the other churches were listening to glorious pipe organ strains, I dare say we would have been satisfied well enough. I always loved to see the gentle little lady seat herself on the narrow bench, arrange her skirts, place her music on the rack and then look up to catch the back of Dominie Dean's curly-haired head in her little mirror.
When Lucille Hardcome announced that she just couldn't stand the squeaky old organ any longer and that the church must have a pipe organ if she had to work night and day for it, we knew the church would have a pipe organ, for Lucille—as a rule—got whatever she set her heart on.
Lucille's announcement threw little Miss Jane into a flutter of excitement. It was as if someone gave a gray wren a thimbleful of champagne. Miss Jane was all chirps of joy and tremblings of the hand. She hardly knew whether to be jauntily joyous or crushed with fear. Her eyes were unwontedly bright, and her cheeks, which had not glowed for years, burned red. The very Friday night that Lucille condemned the old organ and proclaimed a new one Miss Jane, walking beside David Dean (although she felt more like skipping for joy), asked David a daring question.
“Won't it be wonderful to have a real organ—a pipe organ!” she exclaimed. “It means so much in the musical service, Mr. Dean. I try to make the old organ praise the Lord but—of course I don't mean anything I shouldn't—but sometimes I think there is no praise left in the old thing! I can do so much more if we have a pipe organ!”
“I imagine you sometimes think the Old Harry is in the old walnut case, Miss Jane,” said David.
“Oh, I would never think that!” cried Miss Jane, and then she laughed a shamed little laugh. “That is just what sister Mary said last Sunday when the bass growled so!”
She walked a few yards in silence, nerving herself to ask the question.
“Mr. Dean,” she said, “do you think it would be all right—do you think it would be proper—if I asked Mademoiselle Moran to give me a few lessons?”
She almost held her breath waiting for David's answer. It seemed to her, after the question had left her mouth, that it had been a bold, almost brazen, thing to ask David. It seemed almost shameful to ask the dominie such a question, for, you understand, Mademoiselle Moran was a Catholic, and not only a Catholic but the niece of Father Moran, the priest, and his housekeeper, and the organist of St. Bridget's. The lessons would mean that Miss Jane must go to St. Bridget's; they would be given on the great organ there, with the image of the Virgin, and of St. Bridget, and the gaunt crucifix, and the pictures portraying the Stations of the Cross, and the confessionals, and all else, close at hand. To ask the dominie if one might voluntarily venture into the midst of all that!
“Have you spoken to her yet?” asked David, surprisingly unshocked.