I don’t know what I played, but I saw our living room; the lounge that has grown lumpy from the twins jumping on it; the piles of popular music on the piano; mother’s darning in a big basket by the table; the Boston fern in the bay window; even a pan of fudge that didn’t harden, with a knife in it, and Roberta’s knitting--always a tie--half poked under a sofa cushion. And I suppose that doesn’t _seem_ like a pretty picture, but it was pretty to me, and it carried me through. “You can take lessons from me,” Signor Paggi said, as I finished. I thanked him in a little squeaky voice that must have sounded funny. “And now,” he went on, “you can get up. You theenk you seet upon my piano stool all day? You do _not_.” And then I got up and went over to the bench, and my knees shook more than they had as I went over to the piano, which was so silly that it made me ashamed. Leslie took my place, and I don’t think she was much frightened. She was pretty sure of her playing she told us later, and she was used to playing for people, and her assurance I thought would help her, but--it didn’t. Signor Paggi let her play all her selection, before he spoke, and as he did he _cleaned his nails with a toothpick_. “Are you deaf?” he asked in an interested, remote way. “Certainly _not_,” Leslie answered haughtily. “Ah, how greatly then do I pity you! To hear yourself _play_! Oh, _my_!” (And again he clasped his forehead and rolled his eyes at the ceiling) “And also, you improve on Mr. Bach,” he went on, after his tragedy moment was past. “It is very _kind_ of you to show the master how he should do. No doubt he is _grateful_! _I_ think he turn in the grave. . . . Mr. Paderewski have great sense; to work for a country who is lost is better than to teach some I have met. . . . Oh, _my_! Some fool teach you that in girls’ school? _You will drop airs with me, and play what is upon the sheet. You see?_” Leslie, with scarlet cheeks, and bright, angry eyes, got up, and nodded. Then Viola was summoned, and I felt most sorry for her because she had no nerve and she wobbled all the way over to the piano, but she did better than either Leslie or I, and she got off with “Skip that and thanks to heaven it will be shorter!” And so ended that hard half hour that seemed hours long, and started all our winter’s work in Florence. CHAPTER NINE A STROLLING PICNIC