Vinzi was also looking at it, absolutely absorbed. The large black dots seemed to him nothing short of a miracle.
“Now I’ll play you the little piece you liked so much,” Alida continued. “Soon you’ll be able to play it, too. It is awfully easy.”
Vinzi’s eyes glowed as he listened. He drank it in with all his senses.
Just as Alida had reached the end the black-forest clock on the wall struck three.
“The lesson is over, but come again tomorrow,” said Alida jumping up from her chair.
Shaking hands, Vinzi quickly hurried away. Three days passed in the same way. Vinzi proved such an apt pupil that his teacher could not help wondering at his progress. He had played the little piece through once, for he knew it by heart. Reading the notes still gave him trouble. When he had played it only with his index finger, Alida was much shocked. She forbade him ever to play that way again. No human being played like that, she said, for all five fingers of the hand were meant to be used in playing. But it had seemed a much easier way to Vinzi. In the end he saw how much better her way was as it was too difficult for the left hand to move quickly.
Vinzi was grateful for being sent to the pasture every day. It would have been hard for him to work with his father in the barn or stable, because his thoughts were so completely filled with his new studies that it always took him a moment to comprehend what people were saying to him. Once in a while when his father had needed him for little tasks he had shaken his head. “Well, where is your head nowadays, boy?” he had said as he sent him off.
The day had come for the fourth lesson. In happy anticipation Vinzi had been running and was already half way up the stairs, when a sharp voice called to him from below, “Hey there, what does this mean? Come straight down, you forward boy.”
“I am only going up to Alida,” said Vinzi a little frightened.
“What, to Alida? You know no Alida here, and she does not know you, either,” Mrs. Troll cried out indignantly. “Come down this minute or I’ll fetch you down myself in a way you won’t like at all.”