"Goodness!"--cried Laura. "Why, that's Stanford's music to the Eumenides! How on earth did you hear that? Go away. I can play it." She pushed him away and sat down. He hung over her, his face smiling and transformed, while her little hands struggled with the chords, found the after melody, pursued it,--with pauses now and then, in which he would strike in, prompting her, putting his hand down with hers--and finally, after modulations which she made her way through, with laughter and head-shakings, she fell into a weird dance, to which he beat time with hands and limbs, urging her with a rain of comments. "Oh! my goody--isn't that rousing? Play that again--just that change--just once! Oh! Lord--isn't that good, that chord--and that bit afterwards, what a bass!--I say, _isn't_ it a bass? Don't you like it--don't you like it _awfully_?" Suddenly she wheeled round from the piano, and sat fronting him, her hands on her knees. He fell back into a chair. "I say"--he said slowly--"you are a grand 'un! If I'd only known you could play like that!" Her laugh died away. To his amazement she began to frown. "I haven't played--ten notes--since papa died. He liked it so." She, turned her back to him, and began to look at the torn music at the top of the piano. "But you will play--you'll play to me again"--he said beseechingly.--"Why, it would be a sin if you didn't play! Wouldn't I play if I could play like you! I never had more than a lesson, now and again, from old Castle. I used to steal mother's eggs to pay him--I can play any thing I hear--and I've made a song--old Castle's writing it down--he says he'll teach me to do it some day. But of course I'm no good for playing--I never shall be any good. Look at those fingers--they're like bits of stick--beastly things!" He thrust them out indignantly for her inspection. Laura looked at them with a professional air. "I don't call it a bad hand. I expect you've no patience." "Haven't I! I tell you I'd play all day, if it'ld do any good--but it won't." "And how about the poor farm?" said Laura, with a lifted brow. "Oh! the farm--the farm--dang the farm!"--said Mason violently, slapping his knee. Suddenly there was a sound of voices outside, a clattering on the stones of the farmyard. Mason sprang up, all frowns. "That's mother. Here, let's shut the piano--quick! She can't abide it." CHAPTER V Mason went out to meet his mother, and Laura waited. She stood where she had risen, beside the piano, looking nervously towards the door. Childish remembrances and alarms seemed to be thronging back into her mind. There was a noise of voices in the outer room. Then a handle was roughly turned, and Laura saw before her a short, stout woman, with grey hair, and the most piercing black eyes. Intimidated by the eyes, and by the sudden pause of the newcomer on the threshold, Miss Fountain could only look at her interrogatively. "Is it Cousin Elizabeth?" she said, holding out a wavering hand.