the point. I want to know
how you can talk on the piano. What have you got in that folio?
Beethoven? Rachmaninoff? M'Dowell? We'll try the Beethoven. Now don't be
nervous. Just fire away as if you were practising at home!"

It was all very well, Ingred thought, for Dr. Linton to tell her not to
be nervous, but it was a considerable ordeal to have to perform a test
piece before so keen a critic. In spite of her most valiant efforts her
hands trembled, and wrong chords crept in. She kept bravely at it,
however, and managed to reach the end of the first movement, where she
called a halt.

"It's not talking--it's only stuttering and stammering on the piano,"
she apologized.

Dr. Linton laughed. Her remark had evidently pleased him. He always
liked a pupil who fell in with his humor.

"You've the elements of speech in you, though you're still in the
prattling-baby stage," he conceded. "It's something, at any rate, to
find there's material to work upon. Some people wouldn't make musicians
if they practised for a hundred years. We've got to alter your
touch--your technique's entirely wrong--but if you're content to
concentrate on that, we'll soon show some progress. You'll have to stick
to simple studies this term: no blazing away into M'Dowell and
Rachmaninoff yet awhile."

"I'll do anything you tell me," agreed Ingred humbly.

Dr. Linton's manner might be brusque, but he seemed prepared to take an
interest in her work. He was known to give special pains to those whose
artistic caliber appealed to him. In his opinion pupils fell under two
headings: those who had music in them, and those who had not. The
latter, though he might drill them in technique, would never make really
satisfactory pianists; the former, by dint of scolding or cajoling,
according to his mood at the moment, might derive real benefit from his
tuition, and become a credit to him. It was a by-word in the school that
his favorites had the stormiest lessons.

"I'm thankful I'm not a pet pupil," declared Fil, whose playing was
hardly of a classical order. "I should have forty fits if he stalked
about the room, and tore his hair, and shouted like he does with Janie.
He scared me quite enough sitting by my side and saying: 'Shall we take
this again now?' with a sort of grim politeness, as if he were making an
effort to restrain his temper. I know I'm not what he calls musical, but
I can't help it. I'd rather hear comic opera any day than his wretched
can