Mildred screwed up her mouth with a rather humorous expression, then flung her arms round her aunt's neck and gave her an impulsive hug.
"Sweetest darling little Tantie, you can't scold! So please don't begin to try. I know I'm horribly bad. I ought to have been grinding away at that wretched concerto all the time, but it isn't very pretty, and it has such nasty catchy bits in it. I like making up pieces for myself so much better than proper practising. The tunes just come into my head, and then I feel as if I must play them over before I forget them. If I wait, they're gone, and I never can catch them again."
"I don't blame you, dear child, for liking to compose. What I find fault with is that you always want to shirk the hard part of the work. Scales and exercises are not pleasant, I own, but they train your fingers in a way which nothing else can do. How often has the Professor told you that, I wonder?"
"About fifteen dozen times, I dare say!" laughed Mildred, cajoling her aunt into one of the cosy basket-chairs which stood near the hearth, and installing herself in the other, with Godiva, the Persian cat, on her knee. "That doesn't make the scales and exercises any more interesting, though. It's no use, Tantie! I love music, but I detest the drudgery of it. Why need I spend so much time over the part I don't like? Why can't I just play my own tunes, and be happy?"
"Because we all hope you are worthy of better things. Simply to amuse yourself is not the highest ideal, either in music or life. Your violin was the only possession which your father could leave to you, and you must think of it as an inheritance, not as a toy."
"I know so little about my father," said Mildred, leaving her seat, and throwing herself down on the hearth-rug, with her head against her aunt's knee. "You scarcely ever talk about him."
"Because it's a sad remembrance, dear," said Mrs. Graham, stroking the golden hair with a gentle hand. "I've shrunk from speaking of it before, and yet I have often felt lately that you ought to know the story. I would rather you heard it from me than learnt it from anyone who might tell it to you with less sympathy than I should."
She paused, with a far-away look in her eyes, as if memories of the past were living before her. For a moment or two there was silence in the room, only broken by Godiva's purrs and the twittering of the birds outside.