She went down to the hall, slowly, counting the steps, and stood in the hall looking at everything as if she had never been there before.
"I wonder if I might curl in behind that door with a story-book," she thought, "or even with nothing at all; where I could hear the sounds of the other parts of the house! But no, I couldn't. I know it would be wrong, because I've got to be a whole hour at my practising. And I don't want to have two wrongnesses in one day, bad as I am."
She returned at once to the drawing-room, and, seating herself again at the piano, went steadily up and down a whole scale, trying seriously to turn in her thumbs at the right places and to put her fingers where they ought to be when she wanted them. She really worked hard for five minutes, and then stopped and congratulated herself that the hour must be nearly over.
"But I must play over Gran'ma's little tune," she said to herself. "Gran'ma's so fond of it, and it is pretty, only I don't like his being killed. Malbrook was killed, I know he was. Gran'ma told me so."
She got out an old music-book of Madam's young days, and turned to a page on which were a number of small tunes of a few bars each, and each marked with a name.
She began to play the old air of Malbrook, very sweetly and plaintively, so as quite to justify Miss Goodchild's opinion that she had a taste for music. But at the last bar Terry's little hands fell limp, and she burst out crying.
"I know he was killed!" she said; "and what with Jocko's knees and everything I can't bear it. I wonder if Turly would come down and sit with me; that is if my hour isn't up."
Alas! the pitiless old clock informed her that she had still at least half an hour of penance to undergo. Perceiving this she stole up softly to the nursery.
"Turly, dear! Are you there, Turly?"
"Oh yes, I'm here!" said Turly. "Have you done your practising?"