doors; shoving the table back
against the wall demurely with dropped leaves. It did not take long.

There was no need to worry about the dinner. There was a leg of lamb
beautifully cooked, half a dozen pies, their flaky crusts bearing witness
to the culinary skill of the aunts, a fruit cake, a pound cake, a jar of
delectable cookies and another of fat sugary doughnuts, three loaves of
bread, and a sheet of puffy rusks with their shining tops dusted with
sugar. Besides the preserve closet was rich in all kinds of preserves,
jellies and pickles. No, it would not take long to get dinner.

It was into the great parlor that Marcia peeped first. It had been toward
that room that her hopes and fears had turned while she washed the dishes.

The Schuylers were one of the few families in those days that possessed a
musical instrument, and it had been the delight of Marcia's heart. She
seemed to have a natural talent for music, and many an hour she spent at
the old spinet drawing tender tones from the yellowed keys. The spinet had
been in the family for a number of years and very proud had the Schuyler
girls been of it. Kate could rattle off gay waltzes and merry, rollicking
tunes that fairly made the feet of the sedate village maidens flutter in
time to their melody, but Marcia's music had always been more tender and
spiritual. Dear old hymns, she loved, and some of the old classics.
"Stupid old things without any tune," Kate called them. But Marcia
persevered in playing them until she could bring out the beautiful
passages in a way that at least satisfied herself. Her one great desire
had been to take lessons of a real musician and be able to play the
wonderful things that the old masters had composed. It is true that very
few of these had come in her way. One somewhat mutilated copy of Handel's
"Creation," a copy of Haydn's "Messiah," and a few fragments of an old
book of Bach's Fugues and Preludes. Many of these she could not play at
all, but others she had managed to pick out. A visit from a cousin who
lived in Boston and told of the concerts given there by the Handel and
Haydn Society had served to strengthen her deeper interest in music. The
one question that had been going over in her mind ever since she awoke had
been whether there was a musical instrument in the house. She felt that if
there was not she would miss the old spinet in her father's house more
than any other thing about her childhood's home.

So with fear a