“Some folks ain’t had much chance to find out, lately,” and Aunt Mean went off with her favorite “Humph.”
For awhile after that eventful visit, matters went more smoothly for Chee.
She was taught how to tighten the strings of her violin until they formed chords, and how to play scales upon them. Her eyes opened wide with astonishment.
“To think the dear old fiddle hasn’t been to blame, after all!” she joyfully cried. “Just me!”
It was a great revelation to her to find the strings had always to be brought up to a certain pitch. “Why, no wonder Daddy Joe’s couldn’t play if they have to be pulled up every time,” she exclaimed, then added, plaintively, “It’s years and years since Daddy’s pulled up his.”
“Of course it’s no wonder,” laughed her teacher, fingering the companion of his boyhood days. “Even the strings on this are yellow from lying in a paper so long. What must your father’s be like? It’s a great marvel that they have not snapped before this. No, no, little one, don’t condemn the instrument, but keep right on trying to understand it.”
Chee, with a light heart, bade the minister and his wife good-by. She had begun to learn how to make music. And were not a whole package of violin-strings in her pocket?
After this it became more natural for the pastor to say Sundays, “May we have Chee to-morrow, Miss Whittaker?” Or, “Mrs. Green wishes me to engage your little niece for Thursday,” and Aunt Mean seldom refused.
Chee never quite understood why permission was so readily given. Secretly she puzzled over it, but was far too grateful to ask questions.
The truth of the matter is this—it flattered Aunt Mean to have the minister intimate with her little relative. Moreover, she had an indescribable notion that by allowing her niece to frequent the parsonage, she might in some way counterbalance the child’s heathendom. “It’s no use for you to tell me different, Reuben,” she would argue. “Her mother was a heathen, or Injun” (the two were synonymous in Aunt Mean’s mind), “and do what we can, the girl will allers be half a savage.”