while Melinda was certainly pardonable for feeling that in return for what she had done for Richard’s wife she might venture to suggest that the huge box, marked piano, which for ten days had been standing on the front piazza, be opened and the piano set up, so that she could try its tone.  This box had cost Andy a world of trouble, keeping him awake nights, and taking him from his bed more than once, as he fancied he heard a mysterious sound, and feared someone might be stealing the ponderous thing, which it took four men to lift.  With the utmost alacrity he helped in the unpacking, nearly bursting a blood-vessel as he tugged at the heaviest end, and then running to the village with all his speed, to borrow Mrs. Crandall’s piano key, which, fortunately, fitted Ethelyn’s, so that Melinda Jones was soon seated in state, and running her fingers over the superb five-hundred dollar instrument, Ethelyn’s gift from Aunt Barbara on her nineteenth birthday.

Melinda’s fingers were strained and cut with carpet thread, and pricked with carpet tacks, and red with washing dishes, but they moved nimbly over the keys, striking out with a will the few tunes she had learned during her two quarters’ instruction.  She had acquired a great deal of knowledge in a short time, for she was passionately fond of music, and every spare moment had been devoted to it, so that she had mastered the scales with innumerable exercises, besides learning several pieces, of which Money-musk was one.  This she now played with a sprightliness and energy which brought Andy to his feet, while the cowhides moved to the stirring music in a fashion which would have utterly confounded poor Ethelyn could she have seen them.  But Ethelyn was miles and miles away.  She was not coming for a week or more, and in that time Andy tried his hand at Yankee Doodle, playing with one finger, and succeeding far beyond his most sanguine expectations.  Andy was delighted with the piano, and so was Eunice, the hired girl, who left her ironing and her dishes, standing with wiping towel or flatiron in hand, humming an accompaniment to Andy’s playing, and sometimes helping to find the proper key to touch next.

Eunice was not an Irish girl, nor a German, nor a Scotch, but a full-blooded American, and “just as good as her employers,” with whom she always ate and sat.  It was not Mrs. Markham’s custom to keep a girl the year round, but when she did it was Eunice Plympton, the daughter of the drunken fiddler who earned his livelihood by playing for the dances the young people of Olney sometimes got up.  He was anticipating quite a windfall from the infair it was confidently expected would be given by Mrs. Markham in honor of her son’s marriage; and Eunice herself had washed and starched and ironed the white waist she intended to wear on the same occasion.  Of course she knew she would have to wait and tend and do the running, she said to Melinda, to whom she confided her thoughts, but after the supper was over she surely might have one little dance, if with nobody but Andy.