“But that Marilla girl was a benefit to the eye. And she was the most elegant kind of a housekeeper. I was the nearest neighbour, and I used to ride over to the Double-Elm anywhere from nine to sixteen times a week with fresh butter or a quarter of venison or a sample of new sheep-dip just as a frivolous excuse to see Marilla. Marilla and me got to be extensively inveigled with each other, and I was pretty sure I was going to get my rope around her neck and lead her over to the Lomito. Only she was so everlastingly permeated with filial sentiments toward old Cal that I never could get her to talk about serious matters. “You never saw anybody in your life that was as full of knowledge and had less sense than old Cal. He was advised about all the branches of information contained in learning, and he was up to all the rudiments of doctrines and enlightenment. You couldn’t advance him any ideas on any of the parts of speech or lines of thought. You would have thought he was a professor of the weather and politics and chemistry and natural history and the origin of derivations. Any subject you brought up old Cal could give you an abundant synopsis of it from the Greek root up to the time it was sacked and on the market. “One day just after the fall shearing I rides over to the Double-Elm with a lady’s magazine about fashions for Marilla and a scientific paper for old Cal. “While I was tying my pony to a mesquite, out runs Marilla, ‘tickled to death’ with some news that couldn’t wait. “‘Oh, Rush,’ she says, all flushed up with esteem and gratification, ‘what do you think! Dad’s going to buy me a piano. Ain’t it grand? I never dreamed I’d ever have one.” “‘It’s sure joyful,’ says I. ‘I always admired the agreeable uproar of a piano. It’ll be lots of company for you. That’s mighty good of Uncle Cal to do that.’ “‘I’m all undecided,’ says Marilla, ‘between a piano and an organ. A parlour organ is nice.’ “‘Either of ’em,’ says I, ‘is first-class for mitigating the lack of noise around a sheep-ranch. For my part,’ I says, ‘I shouldn’t like anything better than to ride home of an evening and listen to a few waltzes and jigs, with somebody about your size sitting on the piano-stool and rounding up the notes.’ “‘Oh, hush about that,’ says Marilla, ‘and go on in the house. Dad hasn’t rode out to-day. He’s not feeling well.’ “Old Cal was inside, lying on a cot. He had a pretty bad cold and cough. I stayed to supper. “‘Going to get Marilla a piano, I hear,’ says I to him. “‘Why, yes, something of the kind, Rush,’ says he. ‘She’s been hankering for music for a long spell; and I allow to fix her up with something in that line right away. The sheep sheared six pounds all round this fall; and I’m going to get Marilla an instrument if it takes the price of the whole clip to do it.’ “‘_Star wayno_,’ says I. ‘The little girl deserves it.’ “‘I’m going to San Antone on the last load of wool,’ says Uncle Cal, ‘and select an instrument for her myself.’