“To be sure I will, because I have said so.”
“Well, then, dear, good Cousin Charles, buy me a piano.”
“Buy you a winter full of thunder storms—why you will bang me deaf.”
“But not dumb, I’ll bet any thing—you will always be able to scold your poor Cousin Fanny. But I shall play when you are away.”
“I rather think you will when you get a piano. Why do you know what a deal of money one of those thunderers costs?”
Fanny began to be frightened. She did not know, but she was really like the child who cried for the moon. The tears came into her eyes as she thought of herself two years ago. She looked up at her cousin, with her grateful soul beaming from her beautiful eyes, and smiling through her tears, she said, “Cousin, I was very wrong to ask such an impossible thing—will you buy me a canary-bird?”
“Do you give up all claim to the piano if I do?”
“O, yes, to be sure. Please to forget it. Indeed, I did not mean to be a silly girl.”
Thus ended the talk of the piano; but the next afternoon an elegant piano and a beautiful canary-bird, were domesticated in Mr. Evans’s quiet parlor—and Fanny was perfectly wild with delight. That was a wonderful era in her life—a time to date from forever after—though Cousin Charles brushed her off as if she had been a whole swarm of black flies, when she ran to his room, on his return in the evening, to overwhelm him with thanks, and tears, and crazy rejoicings.
“Bless me, Fanny,” said he, “you had better make up your mind whether you are going to melt, or fly away, or go to a lunatic asylum; and when you have concluded, just come and let me know, will you? I can do without you till then.”