I was a little surprised at my own dignity when Sally opened the door to welcome us. My uncle told Aunt Deel that I acted and spoke like Silas Wright, "so nice and proper." Sally was different, too—less playful and more beautiful with long yellow curls covering her shoulders.
"How nice you look!" she said as she took my arm and led me into her playroom.
"These are my new clothes," I boasted. "They are very expensive and I have to be careful of them."
I remember not much that we said or did but I could never forget how she played for me on a great shiny piano—I had never seen one before—and made me feel very humble with music more to my liking than any I have heard since—crude and simple as it was—while her pretty fingers ran up and down the keyboard.
O magic ear of youth! I wonder how it would sound to me now—the rollicking lilt of Barney Leave the Girls Alone—even if a sweet maid flung its banter at me with flashing fingers and well-fashioned lips.
I behaved myself with great care at the table—I remember that—and, after dinner, we played in the dooryard and the stable, I with a great fear of tearing my new clothes. I stopped and cautioned her more than once: "Be careful! For gracious sake! be careful o' my new suit!"
As we were leaving late in the afternoon she said:
"I wish you would come here to school."
"I suppose he will sometime," said Uncle Peabody.
A new hope entered my breast, that moment, and began to grow there.