"Rhoda's behavior grows worse and worse," she had advanced, severely. "And as for her manners, she's a regular Hottentot!"

"Hottentot, eh?" granddad Lawrence repeated, whimsically.

He had me upon his knee, and as he spoke he turned my face toward his, and regarded it with much apparent interest. I gazed back at him wistfully. He was company, and it was very hard that company should hear me called a Hottentot. I was sure that I did not look like that dreadful name which had suddenly sprung upon grandmother's lips. It had such an awful sound!

"She's no worse than other children," my mother urged, in defence.

She might blame me herself, but when grandmother Harcourt looked over her spectacles and invented names my mother was sure to grow angry.

"It seems to me that I've heard about Hottentots before," granddad Lawrence went on, nodding his head. "They're very fond of candy, Hottentots are, and they like their own way. Yes, they like their own way."

"Not any more than other children," my mother said again. "Rhoda gets into mischief solely because she has nothing to do."

"Why don't you send her to school?" granddad Lawrence asked. "She is seven years old."

"Oh, I couldn't send her to school!" my mother cried, anxiously.

"No, not yet," grandmother protested, in her turn.

It was the one subject upon which they agreed.

"Well, let her take lessons in something, then. There's the piano standing untouched. I've heard of Hottentots who had a very good ear for music."

He pinched my ear as he spoke, and puffed out his cheeks in a funny way, as he always did when he wanted to laugh. He had very little hair on his head, and a round, pink face like a baby's, and a pair of wicked blue eyes that saw everything, both before and behind him. I had never heard of granddad Lawrence being cross. He was good to everybody, from the little newsboy who ran after him every morning in the street to the stray dogs which selected him for a master on account of his smile. Most of all he was good to us, his grandchildren, and hardly a day passed by that granddad Lawrence did not come walking in to hear the news. There were no children at his own house, for Auntie May was growing into a young lady, and granddad Lawrence liked children, being a child himself at heart, with all a child's love of mischief. But to the friends who trusted in him, he was the soul of loyalty, in thought as well as in word.

When he went home I walked out to the hall door with him, as I always did, and then we had what he called a mercantile transaction. He bent down low, and patted his pocket.

"Don't you want to draw on the bank?" he asked, invitingly.

I ran my hand far into the depths of that jingling pocket. I could have whatever I liked, but the little brass pennies were the prettiest, and the cute little silver ten-cent pieces, which seemed especially made for children.

"Draw again," he said, generously. "Now give the cashier a kiss."

I did not kiss him for pennies. I kissed him for pure love.

"Come again, dear granddad," I said, standing at the door to peep after him. "Come again to-morrow."

He waved his hand to me.

"Good-bye, Hottentot," he called, mischievously.

"Good-bye," I answered, in rather a plaintive voice.

I did not think that I liked my new name.

That was the first occasion on which I heard of my music lessons, but not the last. My mother seemed to take wonderfully to the idea. She was always discussing the things that she meant us to learn, but up to then we had been too small for any of her plans to be of much importance. To take music lessons was a very simple matter. It could not be considered work, but play on a larger scale; and after I had slipped into the parlor, and touched the piano keys with a timorous finger, I knew that I should like it. The keys were voices. When grown-up people touched them, they sang together beautifully. There was one which was a fairy queen, and one which was a prince, and one away down in the lower bass made me tremble when it talked. That was an ogre. I thought that he might eat little children. I ran out of the parlor in a hurry for fear that he should catch me. Something pattered up the stairs behind me, and chased me along the hall, but in my mother's room not even an ogre would dare to come.

"She loves music!" my mother cried. "She is always hanging around the piano."

Grandmother looked at me curiously.

"There has never been a musician in our family," she remarked, in a dubious way.

"I played before I was married," my mother answered. "There doesn't seem to be any time for it now."

She sighed a little as she spoke.

Her lap was full of pretty new cloth which she was making into dresses, and one of the twins was riding on the rockers of her chair, and one was whistling, shrilly. My mother rocked slowly that there might not be an accident. Most people would have thought that she was only a mother, but at that precise moment she was, also, an express train coming into a station, and I was a passenger waiting to get aboard.

"I think I'll get Madame Tomaso to give Rhoda lessons," she said. "We might as well have the best teacher in town. Dad had the best for me when I was a child. It is the first step which always counts."

The whistle sounded again, and two passengers climbed into the rocker behind my mother's back. We were a very tight fit for the chair. She sat a little forward in a meek way, so as to make room for our toes, and rocked more slowly. The train was going uphill carrying a heavy load.

When she was consulted on the subject, Madame Tomaso proved to be very glad to give me lessons. For some reason or other it had been a poor season for her, either because there were only a few little girls musically inclined in the town, or because, which seems more probable, she had a name for severity. She appeared very amiable, however, the first morning that she entered our house. She drew me to her, with quite a motherly hand, when I came bashfully into the parlor to meet her.

"So this is the small Miss," she said, in a terrifying voice like the ogre's. "And she loves the music? It is well."

She shook hands with me very hard. She had on a dress trimmed with bits of black glass,—I always hated jet afterwards,—and a red silk collar which exactly matched the hearty red in her cheeks. Her hair was black, and her eyes were black. I did not quite like the way that she looked at me. I wondered if she ate little children.

"She is so bright," my mother declared, fondly, pushing the hair back from my forehead. "Stand up straight, Rhoda. You will find that she learns very quickly, Madame Tomaso."

"So?" the ogress answered, in an absent manner.

She was looking at the piano-stool and at me. She was evidently wild to begin, and had not much time to spare for motherly confidences.

"I am afraid that she might fall off the stool," my mother said, hurriedly. "Couldn't you use a chair, Madame Tomaso? Though the chairs are rather low for such a little girl."

They made a chair higher with a big book and a sofa pillow, and set me on top in front of the fascinating white keys. The twins were peeping in the door. I looked back at them grandly. I felt very old and important. It seemed almost impossible that only that morning we had been playing express trains together, like children! Still, there was something about it which frightened me, notwithstanding my pride.

"Go away!" I whispered, warningly, to the figures at the door.

They went quickly in evident alarm. Even Dick did not stop for a second look.

"Will she hurt sister?" Trixie asked, in a high voice, as they climbed upstairs.

Dick peered between the banisters.

"If she does, I'll shoot her," he declared, stoutly.

I was glad to see them escape, but I did not like it quite so well when my mother followed them, and the door was tightly closed. I had such a trapped feeling. And the pillow was so high that I could not get down without help. Anything might happen! Madame Tomaso yawned a little as she settled down by my side, but she was still kind. She put a paper in front of me which was covered with black scratches.

"Which is 'a'?" she asked, sociably, pointing to a row of things.

"'A' was an Archer who shot at a Frog," I recited, in a timid whisper.

The twins and I had learned that out of a pink book with blue edges. The archer was dressed in red, and the frog was green with yellow trimmings. I could, also, say the catechism from cover to cover, if she would like to hear that, and Who Killed Cock Robin. I had never supposed that anybody but my mother cared for such things. She loved to have us say them to her.

"And 'b'?" Madame Tomaso inquired, staring.

"'B' was a Butcher who had a big Dog," I went on, with growing confidence.

I did not feel nearly so frightened now. She was rather nice. If I were very good, maybe she would not eat me after all.

"Don't you know your letters?" she demanded, in astonishment. "Don't you go to school?"

"No," I answered, sadly. "I am not strong."

"Ah! Bah!" she cried, in a rude way.

I was sure, perfectly sure, that even a Hottentot would never have said that.

Madame Tomaso taught me my letters that morning, at least the first seven of them, which seemed particularly needed in music. She called for a bottle of ink, and wrote their names on the white keys. She was very patient with me, as I afterwards found out when I was no longer a new pupil to be coaxed along the thorny path. She put each finger where it belonged, and once, when I played five notes without any trouble, she went down through a rent in her skirt which was fastened together with safety-pins, and fished me out a caramel from a hidden pocket. It was very old and hard, and looked as if it had seen much service, but she regarded me with a benevolent expression while I ate it, and I felt that we had made a good beginning. Take it altogether, I thought that I liked music, and I practiced for hours. It was a great deal of fun when Madame Tomaso was not there, for then I did it all with one finger, which made it much easier. As my feet hung in the air, the twins worked the pedals for me, and my mother would come into the parlor with a pleased smile, and fix the curtains so that I might have a good light.

"That child will surely be a musician," I heard her tell my father, in an eager way. "I've promised her a ring the day that she can play the TrÄumerei. It may take a long time, but then she practices so faithfully!"

My father groaned. I think my mother slapped him.

Of all the family it was, perhaps, Norah who was the most delighted with my lessons. She took a very friendly interest in them. She always dusted the parlor when I was there practicing, and she would sometimes put down a big finger herself on the piano keys in an experimental way, and jump when they sounded. There was only one thing about my music which worried Norah, and that was the fact that I knew no tunes.

"Sure it's time that you were learning something," she would say, suspiciously. "Ain't she keeping you back? Can't you play 'The Wearing of the Green' yit?"

"No," I answered, humbly.

"You ought to have an Irish teacher," she said, conclusively. "Madame Tomaso! It's a cat's name that she has! I never could abide them foreigners."

"Listen, Norah," I urged.

Very carefully, very slowly, with one finger and infinite pains, I played "Home, Sweet Home" for her. She burst into tears, and throwing her arms around my neck, rocked back and forth with grief. For a moment I thought that I had hurt her feelings, but it was all right. Norah was only homesick for old Ireland. She was paying me the highest compliment that I ever received.

Little by little Madame Tomaso came to treat me differently. The coaxing voice grew gruff, and the black eyes savage. No more caramels came out of the rent in her skirt, and sometimes I almost fancied that she was scolding me! I was very little to be scolded. No one had done that before. I tried harder than ever to please her. I practiced with two fingers, and, at last, even with three, one very heavy in the bass, and two very shaky in the treble. I did not tell anybody about the things which she said, for I was ashamed, but I imagined that granddad suspected. Granddad was always so sharp. It was a wonderful comfort to hide my face on his shoulder, and be petted. He was sorry for me without my saying a single word. He made me draw on the bank every day, and he confided to me all the troubles which he had had when he was a boy.

Once he told me of an awful thing that he did. He puffed out his cheeks before he began to talk, so I knew that it was going to be funny.

"I didn't get on well with a maid my mother had," he said. "Her name was Polly. Did I ever tell you about Polly, Rhoda?"

"No, granddad," I answered, eagerly.

I was leaning against his chair, and we had the parlor quite to ourselves. It was a time for confidences.

"Polly didn't like boys," granddad went on.

"But she liked you, granddad," I asserted, loyally.

He shook his head.

"Polly liked me least of all. She may have had her reasons, but it was her fault in the first place, mind you. When I'd bring home a poor stray dog, she would turn it out to starve! And when I brought home stones, and I was always fond of stones, she would dump them out in the road. I felt that I should like to get even."

I nodded at him. I had felt that way myself.

"So I got a lot of pepper, and one day when Polly was going to sweep I scattered it around the house. I rubbed it well into the carpets."

He scraped his foot over the floor to show me just how he did it. For the moment he looked about ten years old.

"I rubbed it in quite hard. It didn't show. Nobody could tell that there was anything wrong until she began to sweep. Well, Rhoda, if you could have heard her sneeze, it would have done you good. She sneezed for hours. At first they thought that Polly had a new kind of sickness. They went flying for the doctor; but my mother had noticed me laugh, and she pounced on me. She shook the truth out of me."

He trembled with laughter at the recollection.

"But what did they do to you, granddad?" I asked, breathlessly.

Sometimes his story would have an anticlimax.

"They put me down in the big black cellar," he declared, impressively.

I rubbed my head against his shoulder. I felt that I could never have treated him in that way if I had been his mother.

"Poor granddad," I said, in a consoling whisper. "They were not good to you!"

He puffed out his cheeks, and his eyes shone.

"That depends," he said, cheerfully. "I didn't mind, bless you. We lived in the country, and they kept their pies in the cellar."

"Yes?" I questioned, eagerly.

"That night when they took stock they were short three pies."

"Oh!" I gasped.

I gazed at him in indecision. He looked back at me quite gravely, save for a lurking twinkle in his eye.

"Did you eat them, granddad?" I asked, confidentially.

He nodded.

"And twenty doughnuts," he said.

I regarded him with deep admiration. What a dreadful bad boy dear granddad had been!

I used often to wish that Madame Tomaso had granddad to deal with. I did not think that she would be so cross, or, at least, she would not show it so openly. She had a trick of frowning until her eyebrows grew together in one thick, black line. She would frown and beat time, and I would chase after her on the piano, with a blur before my eyes, and my heart in my mouth. Sometimes we arrived at a bar together, both out of breath; sometimes she left me far behind, very weak and miserable, with stumbling fingers which refused to hurry. She always beat time with a large black fan, and when the chase proved exhaustive, she would open the fan, and fan herself even in the depth of winter. While she fanned herself she would say things to me, unkind things.

Once she told me about her other pupils.

"I have ten," she said, "ten little girls. Some of them do not make good music. I rap them over the fingers with my fan!"

She went on for quite awhile relating long stories of raps inflicted upon helpless little girls, some of whom had actually been saucy to her, and some of whom had merely played false notes like myself. A much larger girl than I had been rapped that very morning for false notes, and had cried! Afterwards she had played a great deal better.

I listened in growing terror. I wondered if she were trying to frighten me. Then suddenly I glanced up at my great-grandfather's picture.

The parlor walls were hung with the pictures of men who had borne my name. Most of them had preached, but some had fought; and he, my great-grandfather, who looked down over the piano, had preached with a sword in his hand. All the Harcourts had been brave men. They had never been afraid of anything. And on the other side there was granddad Lawrence, whose courage no one could possibly question. He would not have stood this when he was a boy. Just think of Polly!

Something inside of me seemed to awake. I turned and faced her, ogress though she was.

"You'll never rap mine," I said, steadily. "Never! I am bad! I am a Hottentot!"

I made a horrid face at her, such as a Hottentot might be supposed to have.

For the first and only time in the course of our acquaintance she laughed. She laughed as if she would die, while I sat on my sofa pillow and watched her. During the rest of the lesson she was remarkably friendly.

My mother was much pleased with the progress that I made. She often spoke of Madame Tomaso's method, and of how brilliantly her little pupils played. My mother had never heard of raps. All the family were encouraging in their comments, and they, also, set me a shining example. My mother rubbed up her musical knowledge, and even my grandmother would steal into the parlor in the early twilight, and play some Old World melody which held within its tune the hurry of dancing feet. All these I was to learn some day, when my fingers had grown as strong as my desire. I played better and better for the admiring circle, until Madame Tomaso herself would have been astonished if she could have heard me.

"She really does quite well," my father said one night. "It almost sounds like a tune. Is it 'Yankee Doodle,' or 'Old Dog Tray'?"

"Neither!" my mother cried, warmly. "I don't know exactly what it is myself, but it is probably something classic. And she is doing it beautifully!"

"It is 'Yankee Doodle,' mother," I said, in a whisper.

She did not hear me. She was looking at the piano with sad eyes.

"They have taken an awful lot out of it," she said. "It was the first thing that we bought after we were married!"

"Was it?" my father inquired, briskly. "I thought we bought the coffee-pot first. Didn't we fry eggs in the coffee-pot?"

My mother gave him a startled glance.

"We did fry eggs in a coffee-pot," she admitted, reluctantly. "At least you fried them. I did not know how."

"Somehow eggs don't taste as good now-a-days as those did," my father said, musingly. "I wonder if it was the coffee-pot."

Grandmother leant over my shoulder, and examined the piano cover.

"What made that, Rhoda?" she demanded, pointing to a broad streak which ran through the plush.

"That is where Madame Tomaso beats time," I answered, meekly.

They looked at one another.

"She is such an excellent teacher," my mother said, apologetically, "that I suppose I ought not to complain. It's very good of her to take so much trouble. Just as soon as they are large enough, she shall teach the twins, too."

"Oh, no, mother!" I cried, quickly.

"Why not, Rhoda?"

I evaded the question.

"Couldn't I teach them, mother?" I asked, anxiously.

They all laughed at me as if I had said something foolish.

It was evident that I should never get rid of Madame Tomaso. She would come year after year, forever and ever, until I and the twins were quite grown up. The twins were little and easily frightened. She would make them cry. I knew that she would. Sometimes, although I was such a big girl, she almost made me cry, when she beat time and shouted, for she was beginning to shout. And that last scene, though I had been victorious, had rankled. I felt that my mother would be highly indignant if I told her, but somehow I could not tell her. There did not seem to be any way out. I looked at the piano cover, and thought and thought.

"Granddad," I inquired next day, "what became of Polly?"

"Oh, Polly left," he answered.

"Right away, granddad?" I demanded, eagerly.

"Just as soon as she could get her trunk packed. Why?"

I rubbed my head against his shoulder without replying.

He did not ask any more questions, but he looked at me, keenly. He slipped his hand under my chin, and forced me to meet his eyes. I could never hide my thoughts from anybody. And granddad was always so horribly sharp! He chuckled a little as he gazed at me. When he went away he made me draw largely on the bank, and he patted me on the head.

"Keep up your courage," he whispered. "You're game!"

Out in the hall I heard him ask my mother a sudden question.

"When does Madame Tomaso come again?" he inquired, suavely.

It was always on Tuesdays that Madame Tomaso came, and it was strange how Tuesdays raced around. That Tuesday, in particular, arrived almost in a moment while I was still thinking. But I had made my preparations.

"You are very careless about the casters, Norah," my mother said at breakfast. "There is actually no pepper on the table."

"But I filled them last night, ma'am!" Norah cried, staring.

It seemed to me that they all turned and looked at me. I slipped from the room in a hurry. Somehow I felt so queer that morning. I kept sighing, and when the door-bell rang I would get quite cold all over. It rang a great many times before Madame Tomaso came, fresh and alert from her walk, with an air of friendliness which was always sure to disappear later. She turned cross very early that day, even before she had taken off her things.

"I have been too lenient with you, little Miss," she told me, in an awful voice. "We will try a new method."

She seated herself by the piano, and folded her arms. I sat perched on my cushion, and stared at her in fascination. Oh, how I wished that I had let the pepper alone! Oh, how I wished that I was good! After all it was so pleasant to be good.

"Play," she said, in a masterful manner. "I will be an audience. I will be a great many mens and womens. We will listen to you."

I played. It was very terrible. Her eyebrows grew together. That was the way she would look when she found me out, only worse, much worse. I played faster. She watched my notes, and sometimes she would moan, feebly, as if something hurt her. I played on faster still, one trembling little hand racing ahead of the other, until musical flesh and blood could stand it no longer. She began to count with a shout.

"One, two, three, four!" she cried, and brought the fan down on the piano cover.

Then she sneezed.

"I knew it," she murmured, grimly, to herself. "I felt it coming on this morning!"

She counted again and sneezed, and I sneezed a little myself in a hurried, guilty way. She looked at me with sudden suspicion. She was sharp, almost as sharp as granddad. In a second she had lifted the piano cover, and found a pile of pepper under that well-worn spot. The things which she said were awful. She said them in three or four languages, and she said them in such a high voice that my mother and grandmother came running in alarm. She pointed at me, with a shaking finger.

"Look at your child," she cried. "She lays traps for me! Pepper traps!"

"Rhoda!" my mother exclaimed.

My grandmother seemed stricken dumb.

I hung my head in shame. I had forgotten how sorry they would be.

She told them all about it. She knew just why I had done it, and how I had done it. She declared that she would never give me another lesson. No, never! Her voice grew very loud in her denunciation, and the mild words of shocked apology which my mother put in from time to time were swept away in the torrent of her wrath. I saw my grandmother's lip curl, and my mother look astonished. They were judging her by their own standards of quiet reticence and womanly dignity. She was almost justifying me.

Yet before she went she lodged an arrow in my mother's heart.

"As for the child's talent," she cried, and snapped her fingers. "It would be as easy to teach her the tight-rope!"

I heard somebody laugh in the next room. It sounded just like granddad.

My mother and my grandmother went to the door with Madame Tomaso, and saw her out quite as if she were company, and then they came back into the parlor and gazed at me. They did not seem to know just what to say. It was evident that I had done something dreadful. I began to be frightened. We had a big black cellar, with dark, cavernous recesses where cobwebs swayed about, and dwarfs peeped out at you. I wished that it was night, and I was safe in my bed.

Then somebody shuffled in behind me, and patted my head softly. I looked up into two merry blue eyes.

"Don't you fret, Rhoda," a sympathizing voice said. "Granddad will stand by you."

Even now when he is only a memory I can still feel the thrill of gratitude with which I clung to his protecting hand.