"I was sure of it. And why were you trying to get into that house?" The little lady nodded toward Uplands.
"Because it is my grandmother's and--and----" She glanced up shyly at the stranger.
"Go on, please," said the lady, taking a seat on an end of Nan's pretended piano. "Did you want anything in particular?"
There was something compelling in the lady's manner, and Nan replied, "Yes, I did. I know I really ought not to have gone, for mother doesn't like us even to cross the brook. She never actually forbids it, but she looks distressed if she finds out that any of us have been over, but I wanted awfully to see if I could get in and try to open the piano. It seems so perfectly dreadful for it to stand there month after month and year after year, no good to anybody, when I'd give my right hand to have it."
"If you gave your right hand for it," said the lady, suddenly dimpling, "you could only play bass, you know, and I don't believe you would care for that."
Nan laughed. "No, I wouldn't. I like the fine high notes, though sometimes I think the growling bass of the organ at church is beautiful. It makes me think of what it says in the Psalter: 'The noise of the seas, the noise of the waves, and the tumult of the people.'"
The lady nodded understandingly and was silently thoughtful for some moments, then she said, "This is a nice little spot." She put her hand upon Nan's improvised music-rack. "What is this for?" she asked.
Nan blushed. "It's just to hold up the music, you know. That's my piano where you are sitting."
"Goodness!" cried the lady, jumping up. "How undignified of me to sit on a piano. Please pardon me; I didn't know."
"Of course not." Nan's eyes grew starlike. It was not only very delightful but very exciting to meet one who so perfectly understood. "You see," she went on, "all I have at home is a dreadful old melodeon that skips notes and wheezes like our old Pete; he has the heaves, you know."
"Poor old Pete," said the lady, with a tender retrospective look in her eyes. "You have the melodeon, yes, and then?"
"Aunt Sarah always wants to take a nap the minute I begin to play, and to-day," her voice dropped and she went nearer to her visitor, "I had made a new tune and I did so want to write it down. I came out here first and tried it; it sounded very well, I thought, but I had written only a little of it when I had to shut the melodeon. Aunt Sarah always does have such inconvenient times for taking naps," she sighed.