“You see I took lessons six months in London of a native, and that makes a difference,” she said; “and, oh, Mr. Godfrey, do you know where we can rent a piano, I want one so much so as to commence my music. You know I am to be a teacher like Miss Armstrong, and take care of auntie when she is old.” Godfrey promised to make inquiries for a piano, and then suddenly recollecting himself, exclaimed: “Why, there is that old one of mother’s at home, a rattle-trap of a thing, which all the Rossiters must have thrummed since the flood. You can have that if it will answer.” Gertie did not think it would. She had no fancy for a “rattle-trap which all the dead Rossiters had thrummed;” she preferred an instrument which sounded decently, and she said so, and added: “But we’ve nowhere to put one yet. Oh, Mr. Godfrey, what made anybody send that tall bedstead and bureau down here, where they won’t stand up in any of our sleeping-rooms? We had to put the bureau in the parlor, and the bedstead is still in the woodshed. I wish somebody would take it away. I think it is awful, so clumsy, and I fell over it this morning and hurt my foot.” Godfrey laughed aloud, not at Gertie, but at what Miss Rossiter would say could she hear this little plebeian denounce that bedstead as awful and clumsy, and wish it away even from the woodshed! Miss Rossiter had been greatly wounded on account of that bedstead; Miss Rossiter had cried because it was sent to the cottage; she had expressed a wish to have it for her own, and her wish should be gratified. “It was absurd to send that tall furniture to these low rooms,” Godfrey said, “and I’ll see that it is taken away; to-day, perhaps. Did it hurt your foot very much?” “Oh no, not much; it was this one,” and Gertie stuck up her little foot, which even in the half-worn boot looked so small and pretty that Godfrey felt a desire to squeeze it in his hand. But Miss Creighton was coming out, and he straightened himself up and nibbled quite unconcernedly at the end of his cane, while Alice gave a few last directions with regard to her plain sewing. “Good-by, Gertie,” Godfrey said. “I’ll send for the bedstead and inquire about the piano, and I have not used a single slang word this morning, have I? I shall be a perfect gentleman very soon, and then——” he kissed his hand to her, and looking back Alice saw a hot flush on the face of the child, who knew as well as Godfrey to what he alluded. “What do you mean by being so familiar with such people?” Alice asked. “It cannot do them any good. On the contrary, it is a positive harm. Why, Rogers is so airy now I can hardly talk with her.”