But uncle was loath for me to do that. “I want you to do something else besides work in the mill,” he remonstrated. About this time, I became acquainted with Alf Martin, a back-boy, who was playing the piano. His father worked on the mules next to my uncle. The two men talked the matter over, and one day Alf told me that the woman he was taking lessons from, a Miss Flaffer, had said she would give me fifty-cent lessons for thirty-five cents! My uncle said he would pay half of the cost, and in spite of my previous abandonment of music, I succumbed to this scheme, secretly, in my heart, glad of the opportunity of taking lessons from so fine a lady as Alf told me Miss Flaffer was. “When you pay for lessons,” said my uncle, “you’ll think more of them. I could only take you as far as vamping, and you want to do more than that.” Previous to this, I had gotten as much joy, during the week’s work, from anticipations of cream puffs, pork pies, and such minor Saturday joys, but now I had a piano lesson, a real music-lesson, to engage my mind, and that was a very cheerful week spent behind the mules. Alf and I spent much time, when we could get away from the eyes of the bosses, talking over Miss Flaffer, and I came to understand that she was a fine woman indeed. The following Saturday afternoon, then, I took my _Beginner’s Book_, tied it in a roll and fastened it with twine, and went on the street-car to a very aristocratic part of the city. It was the part where, on first landing in America, I had gone on summer days, asking at the back doors if I might pick the pears that had fallen to the lawns from the trees. Miss Flaffer’s house was a very small cottage, with a small piazza at its front, and with a narrow lawn, edged by a low fence, running around it. It was altogether a very pretty place, with its new paint, its neat windows, and the flowers between the curtains. The front steps had evidently never been trodden on by foot of man, for why did they shine so with paint! There was not a scratch on the porch, nor a pencil mark. I looked at the number, at the engraved door-plate, and found that “S. T. Flaffer” did reside within. A great, cold perspiration dripped from me as I put a trembling finger on the push-button. I heard an answering bell somewhere in the depths of the house, and then wished that I might run away. It seemed so bold a thing for me, a mill-boy, to be intruding myself on such aristocratic premises. But I could not move, and then Miss Flaffer herself opened the door!