"Yes, you can. Try again."
"Why don't you jest show me a tune?"
"You have got to know your notes first; and you've got to count, or you never can learn."
"I don't want to learn, Miss Freddy; I want to play! Oh," she said once, clutching her hands against her breast, "I want to play!" Her mournful eyes, black and opaque, gleamed suddenly; then a tear trembled, brimmed over, and dropped down on the work-worn fingers. "I cain't learn, Miss Freddy; I 'ain't got the 'rithmetic. I want to make music!"
Alas, she never could make music! The clumsy hands, the dull brain, held her back from the singing heights! "I cain't learn 'rithmetic," she said (sixteenth and thirty-second notes drew this assertion from her); "and if I cain't play music without 'rithmetic, I might as well give up now."
"Well, you can't," Frederica said, helplessly. She had cut out the last quarter of her league meeting to come home and give Flora a music lesson. (Up-stairs, Mrs. Payton, listening to the thump of the scales, confided to Mrs. Childs that she didn't approve of Flora's playing on the piano. "The parlor is not the place for Flora," she said.) But, watched by Mr. Andrew Payton's marble eyes, the slow fingers went on stumbling over the keys, until Frederica and her pupil were alike disconsolate.
"You poor dear!" Fred said, at last, putting an impulsive arm over the thin shoulders; "try once more! And, Flora, Sam isn't the only man in the world. Come now, cheer up! You're well rid of Sam."
"Sam?" said Flora, her face suddenly vindictive; "I ain't pinin' for no Sam! He was a low-down, no-account nigger—" The door-bell rang, and she jumped to her feet. "I must git my clean apron!" she said; and vanished into the pantry.
Frederica waited, frowning uneasily; callers were not welcome at 15 Payton Street when Fred was at home—the consciousness of the veiled intellect up-stairs made her inhospitable. But it was only Laura and Howard Maitland, both of them tingling with the cold and overflowing with absurd and puppy-like fun.
"Feed us! Feed us!" Laura demanded; "we've walked six miles, and we're perfectly dead!"