Ella pouted.
“I hate playing,” she repeated.
“Don’t be childish,” said her father sharply. “The question is not of your likes or dislikes. It is of what your capacities are. It seems to me you have taste for music and it is only common-sense in your — for everybody to cultivate their best powers.”
“I like singing,” Ella said. “But I don’t see that I need be forced to play if I don’t want to go on with it. It isn’t as if I were going to be a governess.”
“You would probably get to like it better after a while,” said Ermine. “No one could have had more difficulty with the mechanical part of it than I, for though my hands are not small, my fingers are what is called ‘tight.’ But I am so glad now that I didn’t give it up, for though I can’t play like Maddie, I can join her in duets.”
“Much more than that,” said Madelene. “But, Ella, I am sure you are tired. Don’t you think you had better go to bed? It is nearly ten. I feel rather tired myself, somehow.”
Ella rose, with again her air of obtrusive submissiveness. The truth was she was desperately tired—and longing to go to bed, but she would have thought it beneath her dignity to allow it.
“I am not at all sleepy, thank you,” she said, “but of course I am quite ready to go.”
And she turned to bid her father good-night, with a little formal manner that would have been amusing had it not, under the circumstances, been very irritating.
“Good-night, papa. Come, Ermine, you are not to sit up any longer either. We are all rather tired,” said Madelene with a little intentional peremptoriness which Ermine understood, though Ella glanced at her with surprise.