FLAXIE GROWING UP.
CHAPTER I.
PUNISHING ETHEL.
“Stop, Ethel,” said Mary Gray authoritatively, “stop this moment, you are skipping notes.”
The child obeyed gladly, for music was by no means a passion with her, and she especially disliked practising when Mary’s sharp eye was upon her.
“I’m obliged to be severe with you, Ethel, for it never will do to allow you to play carelessly. You are worse than usual this morning, because Kittyleen is waiting in the dining-room. It’s very unfortunate that Kittyleen has to come here in your practising hour, and it makes it pretty hard for me; but what do you think or care about that? If you ever learn to play decently, Ethel Gray, ’twill be entirely owing to me, and your teacher says so. There! run off now and play with Kittyleen; but, remember, you’ll have to finish your practising this afternoon.”
Ethel made her escape, and Mary seated herself in the bay-window at her sewing with a deep sigh of responsibility. Her mother was ill; Julia, the eldest of the family, was confined to her room with headache, and the children had been left in Mary’s care this morning with strict charges to obey her.
“The children” were Philip, a boy of eight and a half, and Ethel, a little girl nearly six; but as Phil was now skating on the pond, and Ethel playing dolls in the dining-room with her young friend, Kittyleen Garland, Mary was free to pursue her own thoughts, and her work was soon lying idly in her lap, while she looked out of the window upon the white front yard facing the river.
There was no one in the room with her but her grandmother, who sat knitting in an easy-chair before the glowing coal fire. Grandma Gray did not seem to grow old. Father Time had not stolen away a single one of her precious graces. He had not dimmed her bright eyes or jarred her gentle voice; the wrinkles he had brought were only “ripples,” and the gray hair he had given her was like a beautiful silver crown.
Grandma looked up from her knitting; Mary looked up from her sewing. Their eyes met, and they both smiled.
“A penny for your thoughts, my child.”