wish to be--I hope to be. If I could only go away to New York city and
study! Before we came here we lived in Buffalo. Father played in an
orchestra there. He had a friend who taught singing and I studied with
him for a year. Then he died suddenly of pneumonia and right after that
father fell on an icy pavement and broke his leg. By the time it was
well again another man had his place in the orchestra. He had a few
pupils, and long before his leg was well he used to sit in a big chair
and teach them. The money that they paid him for lessons was all we had
to live on."

The rising of the curtain on the second act cut short the narrative.
With "I'll tell you the rest later," Constance turned eager eyes toward
the stage.

"Isn't it a beautiful play?" she sighed, when the act ended.

"Lovely," agreed Marjorie; "now tell me the rest."

"Oh, there isn't much more to tell. It was the last of March when father
got hurt, but it was the middle of May before he was quite well again.
Then summer came and most of his pupils went away and we grew poorer and
poorer. Just when we were the poorest the editor of a new musical
magazine wrote him and asked him to write some articles. A friend of
father's in New York told the editor about father and gave him our
address. We decided to move to a smaller city, where we could live more
cheaply, and some of the musicians that father knew gave him a benefit
concert. The money from that helped us to move to Sanford, and father
has been writing articles off and on for the magazine ever since then.
It's better for all of us to be here. Uncle John isn't quite like other
people. When he was a young man he studied to be a virtuoso on the
violin. He overworked and had brain fever just before he was to give his
first recital. After he got well he never played the same again. He had
spent all the money his father left him on his musical education, so he
had to find work wherever he could. He played the violin in different
orchestras, but he was so absent-minded that he couldn't be trusted.
Sometimes he would go on playing after all the rest of the orchestra had
finished, and then he began to repeat things after people.

"When father first met him they were playing in the same theatre
orchestra. One night a great tragedian was playing 'Hamlet,' and poor
Uncle John grew so interested that he said things after him as loud as
he could. The actor was dreadfully angry, and so was the leader of the
orche