Jenny was quite a little musician. She could hum tunes correctly before she could speak plain; and as soon as she was high enough to reach her little hands up to the piano-keys, she began to play “by ear,” for she could not read a note of music. When she heard fine singing, it seemed to throw her into an ecstacy of pleasure; her plain face grew so luminous and beautiful, that you would hardly know it to be little freckled Jenny’s. Her kind father and mother procured her good teachers, and Jenny was not discouraged at the idea of practicing, as, I am sorry to say, are some little girls; for she knew that nothing great is ever attained without patient labor; and long before even Sally was up in the morning, Jenny would be running up and down the scales, as fast as her little fat fingers could fly. Sally used to say, as she set the breakfast-table, that “she did not like that tune as well as Yankee Doodle.” This made Jenny laugh very heartily, but she did not pain Sally by calling her an ignoramus for saying so. And so things went on very pleasantly in Jenny’s home, as is always the case where each one strives to make the other happy.
Little Jenny was in the habit of watching for her father to come home; and when she heard his step in the hall, she would bound down stairs like a little antelope, and jump into his arms, and kiss his face, just as if it were not all covered with beard, whiskers, mustaches, and things. One day she seated herself at the front window, as usual, to wait his turning the corner of the street which led toward the house. “There he comes!” exclaimed Jenny; and then her little hands fell at her side, and she bent her head forward, and pressed her bright face close to the window-pane. Was—that—her—papa, walking so slowly, like an old man, his head bent down upon his breast, and never one look for his little girl? He must be sick—and Jenny ran down stairs, and out at the front door, to meet him on the threshold.
When she asked him, “Was he sick?” he said “No;” but his voice trembled, and a great warm tear fell on Jenny’s face, as he bent over her; and as he turned from her to meet her mamma, Jenny heard him say, “God shield the little lamb;” then Jenny’s mamma told her that “she had better go and practice her music-lesson;” and then Jenny’s father and mother had a long—long talk; and when they came in to dinner, her mamma’s eyes were red with weeping, and her father looked as though he had had a fit of sickness.
Little Jenny asked no questions, for she had a great deal of delicacy, and she knew that if it was proper she should know what troubled her father, that he would tell her; but every time he helped his little daughter to any thing at the table, she would kiss his hands, and at the dessert, she put the biggest orange and largest bunch of grapes upon his plate. Her papa’s heart seemed too full to thank her, but his eyes brimmed with tears, as he laid his hand on her little brown head.
The truth was, Jenny’s father had failed, and lost all his money; and when he looked at Jenny, and thought that he might die before he could earn any more, and leave her, and her mamma, helpless in the world, it was too bitter a thought for him to bear: then the people to whom he owed the money which he had hoped to pay, were coming to take away all the furniture, and fine things; and Jenny’s favorite piano, of course, must go with the rest; and he could not find heart to say a word to her about it.
Well, the day came on which all the things were to be sold; and nobody yet had had courage to tell Jenny—good little Jenny, who never gave a minute’s pain to any body in her life, not even to a little fly. Jenny wondered what made Sally, and all the family look so strangely at her, but she was put off with excuses of one kind and another, and so the bewildered child went to her old friend the piano, for comfort.
As she was playing, she heard a strange voice in the hall; then the door opened, and her father came in with the butcher, of whom he had purchased all the meat for the family since they had lived in that house.
Then—Jenny’s father put his arm around his little girl, and told her that the butcher had come to take her piano for some money which he owed him. Jenny looked at her father as though she could not believe her ears—then she looked at the piano—then at the butcher—while great tears gathered slowly in her eyes.
Now, the butcher was a great rough fellow, with a fist like a sledge-hammer, and a voice like a bass drum; he had killed many a fat little calf, and bleating lamb, in his day; but he had never met such a sweet, pleading, tearful look, as Jenny gave him that minute, and he melted down under it, just like a pile of snow when the warm sun kisses it.
Rubbing the corner of his white butcher’s frock into his eyes, and turning to Jenny’s father, he said,