"The fact is," she proceeded, as they passed through the hall, "that I have a spare hour on my hands this morning—the first in a month. My music teacher has just sent word that she is down with a cold. You shall have as much of that hour as you wish. So tell me all about your plans; I dare say I can scrape together a few pennies for Jane Marshall."
"Her music teacher!" thought Jane. She was not yet so far appeased nor so far forgetful of her own initial awkwardness as to refrain from searching out the joints in the other's armor. "What does a woman of fifty-five want to be taking music lessons for?"
The music-room was a lofty and spacious apartment done completely in hard-woods; its paneled walls and ceilings rang with a magnificent sonority as the two pairs of feet moved across the mirror-like marquetry of the floor.
To one side stood a concert-grand; its case was so unique and so luxurious that even Jane was conscious of its having been made by special order and from a special design. Close at hand stood a tall music-stand in style to correspond. It was laden with handsomely bound scores of all the German classics and the usual operas of the French and Italian schools. These were all ranged in precise order; nothing there seemed to have been disturbed for a year past. "My! isn't it grand!" sighed Jane. She already felt herself succumbing beneath these accumulated splendors.
Mrs. Bates carelessly seated herself on the piano stool, with her back to the instrument. "I don't suppose," she observed, casually, "that I have sat down here for a month."
"What!" cried Jane, with a stare. "If I had such a lovely room as this I should play in it every day."
"Dear me," rejoined Mrs. Bates, "what pleasure could I get from practicing in this great barn of a place, that isn't half full until you've got seventy or eighty people in it? Or on this big sprawling thing?"—thrusting out her elbow backward towards the shimmering cover of the keyboard.
"So then," said Jane to herself, "it's all for show. I knew it was. I don't believe she can play a single note."
"What do you suppose happened to me last winter?" Mrs. Bates went on. "I had the greatest set-back of my life. I asked to join the Amateur Musical Club. They wouldn't let me in."
"Why not?"