the large lonely drawing-room where the
practising had to be done, Terry made one last appeal to fate by opening
the door of Granny's bedroom ever so little and speaking in. Granny might,
after all, not be so severe in this matter as Nurse Nancy.

"Gran'ma, dear," said a little plaintive voice, "do you think I need go to
my practising quite so soon in the holidays?"

"Yes, my darling," answered Madam from among the curtains of her bed. "You
know your mother will expect you to play something pretty for her as soon
as she comes home."

Then Terry strove no more against her doom, but went down to the
drawing-room.

The drawing-room was a handsome old-fashioned apartment, but with that
depressing atmosphere which gathers into rooms, especially large ones,
which have ceased to be much lived in. The curtains drooped sorrowfully,
the carpet had a lonely, untrodden look; the chairs had an air of not
expecting to be sat upon, some Elizabethan portraits on the walls showed
stiff wooden personages, who seemed to have driven all the living persons
out of the room. When the piano was opened, the black and white keys
appeared cold and uninviting to the touch.

"Oh dear! oh dear!" said Terry. "An hour's practising! It is just twelve by
the clock now, and I shall have to strum till one!"

[Illustration]

She spent all the time she could in screwing the music-stool to the right
height for her little figure. It was no sooner up high enough than she
found she wanted it to go down, and then it would go down too low. At last
it was just as right as it could be, and there was nothing more to be done
with it.

Then the first two notes were struck by Terry's two little thumbs. How
strange and audacious they sounded in the silence of the lonely room! Terry
glanced over her shoulder at the pictures, and saw a long-faced man in a
pointed collar looking at her severely.

"Oh, how can I?" she exclaimed, dropping her hands into her lap. "How can I
if he goes on like that?"

She tried again, however, and this time succeeded in running a five-finger
exercise once up and once down.

"I forget how to do it, my fingers are all on the wrong notes. Miss
Goodchild says I have a taste for music. How can I have when I hate a
piano? I love beautiful sounds when I hear them, but these are not
beautiful sounds. I can't make anything but a dismal noise. Even the
long-ago people on the walls object to it. But I must do it again or it
won't be practi