"Thank you. I gladly accept your kind offer if I may pay for that also with my needle."
Effie spent the day with her friends, and before leaving had come to an arrangement with Mildred perfectly satisfactory to both, and taken her first lesson.
Just at its close, before the two had left the piano, Claudina and Lu came in, and, hearing what Mildred had undertaken, earnestly begged that she would add them to her class.
"Father is very anxious for me to learn," said Claudina, "and was wondering, the other day, if it would do to ask you to take me as a scholar. He said you could set your own price; he'd willingly pay it; but as you have no need to make money for yourself he was afraid to propose it. Now, Milly dear, would you be offended? Of course we should feel that you were doing us a favor, even though you let us pay for it."
"No; I don't feel at all offended," Mildred said, laughing and blushing, "and I'd be glad to do anything in my power to gratify you, girls, or your fathers; but I really haven't time."
"Then I suppose we'll have to give it up," remarked Lu with a sigh; "but I do wish this town could afford a music teacher, for I've set my heart on learning to play."
"When spring house-cleaning and sewing are done you won't be so very busy, Milly," suggested Claudina.
"Yes, very nearly if not quite as busy as now, for then I take up my governessing again."
"You're the best sister and daughter I ever heard of," was Claudina's comment.
Tea was just over, and Mrs. Keith stepped out to the kitchen for a consultation with Celestia Ann on the all-important subject of the morrow's breakfast and dinner. Returning to the sitting-room, she found her three girls again plying their needles.