"Well, the words?"
"I wondered how they could like to sing them. There was nothing in them but nonsense."
"You are a very severe critic!"
"No," said Lois deprecatingly; "but I think hymns are so much better."
"Well, we will see. Songs are not the first thing; your voice must be trained."
So a new element came into the busy life of that winter; and music now made demands on time and attention which Lois found it a little difficult to meet, without abridging the long reading hours and diligent studies to which she had hitherto been giving all her spare time. But the piano was so alluring! And every morsel of real music that Mrs. Barclay touched was so entrancing to Lois. To Lois; Madge did not care about it, except for the wonder of seeing Mrs. Barclay's fingers fly over the keys; and Charity took quite a different view again.
"Mother," she said one evening to the old lady, whom they often called so, "don't it seem to you that Lois is gettin' turned round?"
"How, my dear?"
"Well, it ain't like the Lois we used to have. She's rushin' at books from morning to night, or scritch-scratching on a slate; and the rest o' the time she's like nothin' but the girl in the song, that had 'bells on her fingers and rings on her toes.' I hear that piano-forty going at all hours; it's tinkle, tinkle, every other thing. What's the good of all that?"
"What's the harm?" said Lois.