Old Colonel Seymour was a passionate lover of music, and it was the one grievance of his life that his daughter Nanny had no voice, and no ear, and never could learn to sing or play on the piano. He could never understand it, he said, how a girl born with the usual allowance of senses, with a quick pair of ears, and a nimble tongue, and who could hear as fast and talk much faster than anybody he ever saw, should pretend that she did not know one tune from another! She that was neither deaf, nor dumb, nor an idiot! It was an incomprehensible fact, but it was no less a great personal injury to himself.
But his one great delight was to come over to Old Lyon Hall in the evening, and hear Drusilla sing and play. Now, we know that her greatest gift was music. She sang with a passion and power equalled by no one in private circles, and excelled by but few in professional life. Honest Colonel Seymour had never in all his earthly experience had the privilege of hearing a great public singer. Therefore the performances of Drusilla affected, I might even say, overwhelmed him or transported him, with equal wonder and delight.
And Drusilla exerted herself hour after hour, and evening after evening, to please him, and took as much pleasure herself in the intense appreciation of her one single old adorer, as ever a great prima donna did in the applause of a whole world.
And the honest old gentleman’s head was fairly turned with admiration and gratitude.
“To think,” he said, as he walked home with his wife and daughter, one moonlight night, after spending an evening at Old Lyon Hall, “to think of having such a voice as that in the neighborhood! to think of being able to hear it several times a week, for the asking! Oh! it ought, indeed it ought, to raise the price of real estate in this locality! And it would do it, too, if people really could feel what good music is!”
“Papa,” laughed the old wife, “you are an old gander. And if you were not gray and bald, and very good, I should be jealous.”
“Oh, but mother, such strains! Oh, my Heavens, such divine strains!” he exclaimed, catching his breath in ecstasy.
“What will you do when your St. Cecilia leaves the neighborhood?” inquired his daughter.
“Leave the neighborhood! is she going to do that?” gasped the music-maniac.
“They are all going to Washington, next winter, she says.”