But the woman laughed at the first words, and said,—
“Leave me alone! Are hands like yours made to work?”
And when Henrietta insisted, and showed her, as a proof of what she could do, the embroidery which she had commenced, she replied,—
“That is very pretty; but embroidering from morning till night would not enable a fairy to keep a canary-bird.”
There was probably some truth in what she said, exaggerated as it sounded; and the poor girl hastened to add that she understood other kinds of work also. She was a first-class musician, for instance, and fully able to give music-lessons, or teach singing, if she could only get pupils. At these words a ray of diabolic satisfaction lighted up the old woman’s eyes; and she cried out,—
“What, my ‘pussy-cat,’ could you play dancing-music, like those artists who go to the large parties of fashionable people?”
“Certainly!”
“Well, that is a talent worth something! Why did you not tell me before? I will think of it, and you shall see.”
On the next Saturday, early in the morning, she appeared in Henrietta’s room with the bright face of a bearer of good news.
“I have thought of you,” she said as soon as she entered.