Mrs. Benham, looking across the work-bench at her husband and daughter, nodded and laughed at them.
"You're just alike,—you two," she said. "There's nothing now but the little engine and the little fiddle. But how does it happen, Hope, that Mr. Kolb could give you such a long lesson? Didn't he go in to play at the concert to-night?"
"No; he has a cold, and his nephew, Karl, is to take his place. It is Karl, you know, who teaches at the Conservatory; and Mr. Kolb says that some time, when he gets too old and rheumatic to go out in the evening, he may give up orchestra-playing altogether, and take to teaching like Karl."
"Well, he'll have to get more profitable pupils than Hope Benham in that case," said Mrs. Benham, laughingly.
"Mother, do you think—is it taking too much—from—"
"No, no, Hope," interrupted her mother. "I don't think anything of the kind. Mr. Kolb meant what he said when he told you he'd like to give you lessons. Don't you fret about that; father will pay him some time."
"Perhaps I'll pay him when—" But Mrs. Benham did not stop to hear the end of her daughter's sentence. A patter of rain-drops caught her ear, and she hurried away to close the upper windows. Hope turned to her father with her new idea; she was aglow with it.
"Farver," she began, using her old baby pronunciation, as she was in the habit of doing now and then,—"Farver, Mr. Kolb says if I practise hard, I may get to play the little fiddle at a concert some day, and earn money, and then—then, I shall pay Mr. Kolb for teaching me, farver."
"Oh! that is your plan? Hope, the little fiddle has done a good work already. It has pushed all that bad time out of your mind, hasn't it?"
"Yes, yes, it has pushed it away—away—oh! ever so much further; but, farver," and Hope put her head down on her father's shoulder, "I—I—don't ever want to see that girl again."