illa?'

"Doc Simpson beckoned Marilla to one side and recommended her to do
what Uncle Cal wanted, so it would get him quieted. And her uncle Ben
and his wife asked her, too.

"'Why not hit out a tune or two with the soft pedal on?' I asks
Marilla. 'Uncle Cal has begged you so often. It would please him a
good deal to hear you touch up the piano he's bought for you. Don't
you think you might?'

"But Marilla stands there with big tears rolling down from her eyes
and says nothing. And then she runs over and slips her arm under Uncle
Cal's neck and hugs him tight.

"'Why, last night, dad,' we heard her say, 'I played it ever so much.
Honest--I have been playing it. And it's such a splendid instrument,
you don't know how I love it. Last night I played "Bonnie Dundee" and
the "Anvil Polka" and the "Blue Danube"--and lots of pieces. You must
surely have heard me playing a little, didn't you, dad? I didn't like
to play loud when you was so sick.'

"'Well, well,' says Uncle Cal, 'maybe I did. Maybe I did and forgot
about it. My head is a little cranky at times. I heard the man in the
store play it fine. I'm mighty glad you like it, Marilla. Yes, I
believe I could go to sleep a while if you'll stay right beside me
till I do.'

"There was where Marilla had me guessing. Much as she thought of that
old man, she wouldn't strike a note on that piano that he'd bought
her. I couldn't imagine why she told him she'd been playing it, for
the wagon-sheet hadn't ever been off of it since she put it back on
the same day it come. I knew she could play a little anyhow, for I'd
once heard her snatch some pretty fair dance-music out of an old piano
at the Charco Largo Ranch.

"Well, in about a week the pneumonia got the best of Uncle Cal. They
had the funeral over at Birdstail, and all of us went over. I brought
Marilla back home in my buckboard. Her uncle Ben and his wife were
going to stay there a few days with her.

"That night Marilla takes me in the room where the piano was, while
the others were out on the gallery.

"'Come here, Rush,' says she; 'I want you to see this now.'

"She unties the rope, and drags off the wagon-sheet.

"If you ever rode a saddle without a horse, or fired off a gun that
wasn't loaded, or took a drink out of an empty bottle, why, then you
might have been able to scare an opera or two out of the instrument
Uncle Cal had bought.

"Instead of a piano, it was one of the machines they've invented to
pla