So Chee—in spite of her aunt’s arguing, decidedly a whole person—was allowed to spend one or two days of every week with her friends.
From chords and scales, she learned to pick out simple tunes, those she heard at church being her chief source of selection. After awhile she learned to play little melodies of her own composing. “Wind and bird songs,” she called them.
The clergyman gave her all the rules for violin-playing he knew, and his wife taught her to read music.
They were happy times for Chee,—Mrs. Green at the piano, playing old, familiar hymns, Chee picking out the notes on the minister’s violin.
One day she said, “Some way, Mr. Green, I can’t love your fiddle like I do Daddy’s.” Then fearing she might hurt her good friend’s feelings, she hastened to add, “It’s very much shinier, and of course it’s a fiddle.” Mrs. Green used to wonder if “fiddle” wasn’t the most beautiful word in all the world to Chee.
Three years passed without much change except Chee’s gradual improvement and increasing delight in her music.
In Aunt Mean’s best parlor, a hymn-book lay in prim stateliness beside the family Bible. It was a coveted treasure to Chee. But the principle of strict honesty was a part of her very soul, in spite of her “heathen” mother, and the Bible was never left alone to gather dust.
Much to her displeasure, she was “broke in.” But in time she took her household duties as a matter of course, and things went on much in the same old way.
CHAPTER VI.
ONCE Chee suffered a great scare. The whole secret of her violin threatened to come out.