"Oh, how can I?" she exclaimed, dropping her hands into her lap. "How can I if he goes on like that?"
She tried again, however, and this time succeeded in running a five-finger exercise once up and once down.
"I forget how to do it, my fingers are all on the wrong notes. Miss Goodchild says I have a taste for music. How can I have when I hate a piano? I love beautiful sounds when I hear them, but these are not beautiful sounds. I can't make anything but a dismal noise. Even the long-ago people on the walls object to it. But I must do it again or it won't be practising;" and this time Terry ran the five-finger exercise up and down two or three times without stopping before she let her hands drop again from the keys.
Suddenly a bright idea struck her.
"I wonder what o'clock it is!" she said to herself. "I must have been at least half an hour in this room."
She got down from the high stool and walked slowly across the long room, feeling that she was getting rid of a little time by restraining her usual rapid movements. Arriving at the door she stood with her back to it for a few moments, gazing all around.
"Could it ever have been a real everyday place to live in, like Granny's sitting-room upstairs, or the day nursery? Granny says it was a lovely, comfortable room when she was going about, and everybody was in it every day. And certainly there are a lot of nice things in it, if they were only shaken about. But there's nobody to shake them, and it's awfully ghosty, and I do so feel afraid the ghosts will hear my bad playing and come to me. Now, I'm sure it must be half an hour, and I may go and look at the clock!"
She slipped out of the door and closed it behind her quickly, as if she feared invisible hands might catch her unawares to keep her within. Up two flights of stairs she went, and looked at the clock on the landing.
"Only ten minutes past twelve!" she exclaimed in dismay. "Oh, that dreadful old clock must have stopped herself on purpose! Now, I will just watch to see. I don't believe she's moving at all." And Terry put her back against the wall and fixed her eyes on her enemy.
"No; she's going," said Terry, as the minute-hand made a slight onward jerk, "but she has gone slow just the very morning I have got to practise."