Terry; Or, She ought to have been a Boy

by Rosa M. Gilbert

However, Terry accepted her sentence in silence. She never thought of disobeying a direct command like this; for it was true, as she had often said, that she never did a thing which she believed at the time to be wrong. It would be clearly wrong to refuse to do her practising when Nurse and Gran'ma had decreed that it was to be done, and so she recognized that the hated ordeal must be faced.

She got out her "music", sheets covered with wicked-looking black notes, having figures and crosses marked above them in pencil to show her where to put her little fingers, which were always sure to get themselves in the wrong places. Before descending to the large lonely drawing-room where the practising had to be done, Terry made one last appeal to fate by opening the door of Granny's bedroom ever so little and speaking in. Granny might, after all, not be so severe in this matter as Nurse Nancy.

"Gran'ma, dear," said a little plaintive voice, "do you think I need go to my practising quite so soon in the holidays?"

"Yes, my darling," answered Madam from among the curtains of her bed. "You know your mother will expect you to play something pretty for her as soon as she comes home."

Then Terry strove no more against her doom, but went down to the drawing-room.

The drawing-room was a handsome old-fashioned apartment, but with that depressing atmosphere which gathers into rooms, especially large ones, which have ceased to be much lived in. The curtains drooped sorrowfully, the carpet had a lonely, untrodden look; the chairs had an air of not expecting to be sat upon, some Elizabethan portraits on the walls showed stiff wooden personages, who seemed to have driven all the living persons out of the room. When the piano was opened, the black and white keys appeared cold and uninviting to the touch.

"Oh dear! oh dear!" said Terry. "An hour's practising! It is just twelve by the clock now, and I shall have to strum till one!"

She spent all the time she could in screwing the music-stool to the right height for her little figure. It was no sooner up high enough than she found she wanted it to go down, and then it would go down too low. At last it was just as right as it could be, and there was nothing more to be done with it.

Then the first two notes were struck by Terry's two little thumbs. How strange and audacious they sounded in the silence of the lonely room! Terry glanced over her shoulder at the pictures, and saw a long-faced man in a pointed collar looking at her severely.