There was in the village an ancient maiden lady who had lived in Boston in her youth, and had learned to play several tunes on the harpsichord. These, for a small stipend, she imparted to Persis. They were simple and artless melodies, and Persis had a ready ear. In a short time she had learned all the maiden lady knew. She could sing three old songs, innocently imitating her teacher’s quaver with her sweet young voice, and she could finger out quite correctly one battle piece and two jigs. The two jigs she played very slowly, according to her teacher’s instructions. Persis herself did not know why, but this elderly maiden was astute. She did not wish Ichabod Buckley and his family to be tormented with scruples themselves, neither did she wish to be called to account for teaching light and worldly tunes. “Play these very slowly, my dear,” she said. She shook the two bunches of gray curls which bobbed outside her cap over her thin red cheeks; her old blue eyes winked with a light which Persis did not understand. “Be they psalm tunes?” she inquired, innocently. “’Tis according to the way you play them,” replied her teacher, evasively. And Persis never knew, nor any of her family, that she played jigs. However, one worldly amusement, which was accounted distinctly sinful, was Persis taught with the direct connivance of her parents. This old maiden lady, although she was constant in the meeting-house on the Sabbath day, and was not seen to move a muscle of dissent when the parson proclaimed the endless doom of the wicked, had Unitarian traditions, and her life in her youth had been more gayly and broadly ordered than that of those about her. It had always been whispered that she had played cards, and had even danced, in days gone by. To the most rigidly sanctified nostrils there was always perceptible a faint spiritual odor of past frivolity when she came into the meeting-house, although she seemed to subscribe faithfully to all the orthodox tenets. The parson often felt it his duty to call upon her, and enter into wordy expounding of the truth, and tempt her with argument. She never questioned his precepts, and never argued, yet a suspicion as to her inmost heresy was always abroad. Had it not been so, Sarah Buckley would never have dared make one proposition to her with regard to her daughter’s accomplishments. One day the shutters in the Buckley front room were carefully closed, as if some one lay dead therein; the candles were lighted, and this ancient maiden lady, holding with both hands her petticoats above her thin ankles in their black silk hose, taught Persis Buckley some dancing steps. That, nobody in the village ever knew. All the parties concerned would have been brought before the church had that secret been disclosed. The Buckleys scarcely dared mention it to one another.