As for two months ago, at that time the thought of the possibility of ever being willing to fill such a place had not occurred to her.
CHAPTER IV.
AN OPEN DOOR.
WELL, surely there was a chance to teach music to private pupils? No, if you will credit it, there was not even such a chance! There was less reasonable explanation for this closed door than the other. Surely, in the great city, full of would-be musicians, she might have found a corner! Doubtless she would have done so in time, but it amazed her as the days went by, and one by one the pupils on whom she had counted with almost certainty were found to have excellent reasons why they ought to remain with their present teacher, or why they ought not to take up music for the present.
In some cases the dilemma was real and the excuse good. In others it was born simply of fear. Oh, yes, they knew that Miss Benedict was a brilliant player, there was not her equal in the city; and as for her voice, it was simply superb; but then it did not follow that a fine musician was a fine teacher. She had not been educated for a teacher; that had been the farthest removed from her intention until necessity forced it upon her. It stood to reason that a girl who had been brought up in luxury, and had cultivated her musical talent as a passion, merely for her own pleasure, should know nothing about the principles of teaching, and have little patience with the drudgery of it. They had always been warned against broken-down ladies as teachers of anything.
There was a great deal of this feeling; and Claire, as she began to realize it more, was kept from bitterness because of the honesty of her nature. She could see that there was truth in these conclusions; and while she knew that she could give their children such teaching as the parents might have been glad to get, at any price, she admitted that they could not know this as she did, and were not to blame for caution.
She was kept from bitterness by one other experience.
There came to see her one evening, a woman who had done plain sewing for her in the days gone by; whom she had paid liberally and for whom she had interested herself to secure better paid labor than she had found her doing. This woman, with a certain confused air, as of one asking a favor, had come to say that she would take it as a great thing, if her Fanny could get into Miss Benedict's music class.
Miss Benedict explained kindly that she had no music class, but if she should form one in the city, it would give her pleasure to count Fanny as one of her pupils, and the mother could pay for it, if she wished, in doing a little sewing for them some time, when they should have sewing again to do. The sentence ended with a sigh. But the caller's embarrassment increased. She even forgot to thank the lady for her gracious intention, and looked down at her somewhat faded shawl, and twisted the fringe of it, and blushed, and tried to stammer out something. Claire began to suspect that this was but a small part of her errand, and to be roused to sympathy. Was there anything else she could do for her in any way, she questioned.