“If it wasn’t for that horrid practicing!” she finished.
“Never mind,” said Katy, “Gertie can be fixing the store and I’ll start right in on a hat. It’ll take a lot of work I tell you—we’re going to charge ten cents a hat.”
Chicken Little started reluctantly back to the house and still more reluctantly settled down on the old green-velvet piano stool to practice. There was not much music in her soul, and sitting still at anything was torture. She squirmed even when she read, and her brother Frank said she got into sixty-nine different positions by actual count during the sermon one Sunday. He had made her a standing offer of ten cents whenever she could sit perfectly still for five minutes, but so far his money was safe.
The moon-faced clock on the opposite wall ticked monotonously and Chicken Little’s small fingers thumped stiffly at the five-finger exercises while she painfully counted aloud, partly to get the time and partly for company.
At the end of ten minutes she looked up at the clock in despair—surely it must have stopped! But no, the big pendulum was swinging faithfully to and fro. She tried scales, then she went back to exercises. She squirmed and wriggled and counted the big white medallions in the crimson body-brussels carpet. These medallions were her especial admiration, for each was bordered with elaborate curlicues, and contained a gorgeous basket of woolen flowers, the like of which never bloomed in any garden, temperate or tropical. There were fifteen of these across the room and twenty-five lengthwise.
The lace curtains were floral, too. She occupied five minutes trying for the hundredth time to decide, whether a delicate lace bloom with the circumference of a holly-hock was intended for a lily or a rose. The old steel engraving of General Washington’s household hanging over the piano helped on a few moments more. The colored servant back of the general’s chair had a fascination for her even greater than Martha Washington’s mob cap and lace mitts. But, alas, even with the aid of these diversions she had only worried through twenty-five minutes.
Then she had an inspiration. “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” lay on the sofa open face downward where she had left it half an hour before. She propped the book on the music rack and started in once more on the exercises. The exercises, however, refused to combine with reading—the discords were painful even to Jane’s ears so she tried scales which worked like a charm. Mechanically her hands rippled up and down the keys while her fancy fluttered off after “Snow White” and “Rose Red.” And the big clock was so neglected that it was five minutes past the hour before she thought to look at it again.
“Finished your hour, Daughter? Did you practice faithfully?”
Chicken Little considered a moment before replying.