Gretta’s “Yes,” spoken eagerly, while her heart beat high, and her eyes glowed like stars, showed the head mistress how keenly the girl felt on the subject; Miss Slater was, for that reason, not so surprised as otherwise she might have been when, on meeting Monsieur Villon, after the first lesson, he gave utterance to volumes of praise. “Mais, it ees magnificent! Such playing I ’ave never heard at zee Cliff School!”
“Oh, Monsieur Villon, this child is only fourteen! Don’t you remember Maud Adams who left a year ago?”
“Mees Adams! But not to compare with little Mees Grey.” The professor held his hands expressively.
“But she has had so few lessons, Monsieur Villon,” pursued Miss Slater.
“That does not signify. Bien, I can give ’er lessons. Mais oui, but—music, eet ees in ’er.”
The professor departed, still chattering volubly; Miss Slater wrote rather more guardedly to Mrs. Fleming, and Gretta, knowing nothing but that her first lesson had been like the realization of her most happy dreams, and already longing impatiently for the next one, went about her work like a girl transformed, her eyes bright and joyous.
“There’s something in Margaret Grey, after all,” announced her form mistress, who had been more than a little distressed at the appearance of such a very backward fourteen-year-old on the first day of term. “I thought she was stupid, but I don’t think she’s exactly that.”
“If you’d been listening to that child’s practising,” remarked Miss Read, the house-mistress, who “understood music,” as the other mistresses said, “you’d use a very different word; there’s going to be a surprise for Gretta’s people over her violin-playing; of that I’m quite sure.”
Auntie wrote telling her older niece that Miss Slater thought it wise for her to continue the lessons with Monsieur Villon, and adding that on her visit to Redgate she had found the doctor very busy and looking well, and that although, of course, he missed the two little girls, he seemed to be managing as well as could be expected under the care of Ann, who was turning out “quite capable!”
“If she’ll only keep on being like that,” said Gretta with a sigh at the remembrance of the varying moods of the maid, “then I shall be the happiest person in the whole world.”