"Oh, it sounds very well, I assure you, Miss Pamela," he said.
"You see," went on the lady, "it hasn't been tuned for four years or more. Mr. Scrutite went about the country for many a year tuning pianos; but he got old, and the last time he came he left his tuning key, or whatever you call it, saying he'd be round again if he could; but he never came. It's such an expensive thing, you know, to bring a man twenty miles to do it, that I've been putting it off, and putting it off. But we'll have it done now, eh, Kitty?"
"Why, Miss Pamela," said Ned, "I'll do it for you, if you have the thing they do it with."
"You, Master Ned? Can you tune a piano?"
"Well, I never did tune one, but I know exactly how they do it. I've seen Professor Seaflatt tune my mother's ever so many times."
"Oh, I'm sure you could do it, if you really feel as if you could take so much trouble; it would be a great kindness to us."
"Of course I'll do it, with the greatest pleasure in the world, ma'am. Let me see— I am to go home to-morrow afternoon; I'll do it the first thing in the morning." And rash Ned went to rest on Miss Pamela's feather-bed, in a room smelling of withered rose leaves. The bed was hung with old chintz curtains; the wall-paper displayed a pattern of large faded flowers. The swallows made a soft twittering in the wide chimney, as he closed his eyes with a glow of satisfaction at the thought of the kind action (and very clever one, too!) he had undertaken to perform.
He found it harder than he had expected. The screws were rusty and hard to move, and the tuning key was old, and would slip. But before noon he announced his task completed, and Miss Pamela and her two nieces gathered near, their faces beaming with interest.
The piano was small and narrow, with legs so thin as to suggest to Ned that it needed pantaloons. It had been the pride and glory of Miss Pamela's girlhood, and was still, in her eyes, an excellent and valuable instrument, although she, being of a modest turn of mind, was willing to acknowledge that it had probably seen its best days.
"It will be so nice to have it in good tune again!" she said, in a tone of great satisfaction. "I declare, Master Ned, what a thing it is to have such advantages as you boys are having!—to be able to turn your hand to 'most anything! Now, then, Kitty, play 'Days of Absence.'"