She played two or three simple airs which her music teacher--he was also assistant to Mr. Wixon, the undertaker--had taught her. Her uncle did not speak during the playing. When she glanced at him he was sitting upon the sofa, his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched out in front of him. He appeared to be lost in thought and the thought not of the pleasantest. Once she heard him sigh. When, at the end of her third selection, she paused and he seemed not to be aware of it, she ventured to address him. “I’m afraid that is about all I can play now--without my music,” she said. He looked up with a start. “Eh?” he queried. “Oh, all right, all right! I’m much obliged. Maybe that will do, for now. Suppose we go back into the other room; shall we?” He rose from the sofa and she from the stool. She was disappointed and a little hurt. He had not offered a word of praise. When they had entered the library he turned and closed the door behind them. “That is the first time I have been in that room since--since the funeral,” he muttered. “Just now I feel as if I never wanted to go into it again.... Well, there! that’s foolishness,” he added, squaring his shoulders. “I shall go into it, of course. We’ll go in there to-morrow and then I want you to sing for me. I have heard a lot about that voice of yours.” She did not know how to answer and he did not wait for her to do so. “You play first rate, I should say,” he went on. “You mustn’t think I didn’t like it; I did. It was only that--well, that blasted room and--and the music together were-- Humph! Well, there! Sit down and tell me about your singing. Who has been teaching you?” She told him. Mr. Cornelius Gott, the undertaker’s assistant, sang in the choir, taught singing school in the winter, and a few pupils in private. His voice was a high tenor and his charges low. Townsend grunted when his name was mentioned. “I wouldn’t hire that fellow to learn my dog to howl,” he declared. “We’ll find somebody better than that for you, if we have to send to Boston. Who picked _him_ out?” Esther resented this contemptuous dismissal of the teacher whom she had considered rather wonderful. He was young and very polite and sported a most becoming mustache. “Aunt Reliance got him to teach me,” she said. “He didn’t want to do it at first, for she couldn’t pay his regular prices. If it hadn’t been for her I shouldn’t have had any one. He taught me to play, too. _We_ think he is splendid.” Her uncle ignored the defiance in her tone. He pulled his beard. “Reliance Clark is an able woman,” he observed, reflectively. “It must have meant considerable scrimping on her part to pay even what that numskull charged. She’s done well by you, I’ll say that for her.” It needed only this reference to her beloved aunt to bring the tears to the girl’s eyes. “I love her better than any one else in the world,” she announced, impulsively. “And I always shall.” He looked at her. Then he smiled.