“Old lady” was a favorite title with him.  He called his mother so, and Melinda, and Eunice Plympton, and Maria Moorehouse, whose eyes he thought so bright, and whom he always saw home from meeting on Sunday nights; and so it never occurred to him that this was his offense.  But Melinda knew, and her red cheeks burned scarlet as she tried to cover her brother’s blunder by modestly urging Ethelyn to favor them with some music.

Of all the Western people whom she had seen, Ethelyn liked Melinda the best.  She had thought her rather familiar, and after the Olneyites came in and put her more at her ease, she fancied her a little flippant and forward; but, in all she did or said, there was so much genuine sincerity and frankness, that Ethelyn could not dislike her as she had thought she should dislike a sister of Abigail Jones and the terrible Tim.  She had not touched her piano since her arrival, for fear of the homesickness which its familiar tones might awaken, and when she saw Tim’s big red hands fingering the keys, in her resentment at the desecration she said to herself that she never would touch it again; but when in a low aside Melinda added to her entreaties:  “Please, Mrs. Markham, don’t mind Tim—­he means well enough, and would not be rude for the world, if he knew it,” she began to give way, and it scarcely needed Richard’s imperative, “Ethelyn,” to bring her to her feet.  No one offered to conduct her to the piano—­not even Richard, who sat just where he was; while Tim, in his haste to vacate the music stool, precipitated it to the floor, and got his leather shoes entangled in Ethelyn’s skirts.

Tim, and Will Parsons, and Andy all hastened to pick up the stool, knocking their heads together, and raising a laugh in which Ethelyn could not join.  Thoroughly disgusted and sick at heart, she felt much as the Jewish maidens must have felt when required to give a song.  Her harp was indeed upon the willows hung, and her heart was turning sadly toward her far-off Jerusalem as she sat down and tried to think what she should play to suit her audience.  Suddenly it occurred to her to suit herself rather than her hearers, and her snowy fingers—­from which flashed Daisy’s diamond and a superb emerald—­swept the keys with a masterly grace and skill.  Ethelyn was perfectly at home at the piano, and dashing off into a brilliant and difficult overture, she held her hearers for a few minutes astonished both at her execution and the sounds she made.  To the most of them, however, the sounds were meaningless; their tastes had not yet been cultivated up to Ethelyn’s style.  They wanted something familiar—­something they had heard before; and when the fine performance was ended terrible Tim electrified her with the characteristic exclamation:  “That was mighty fine, no doubt, for them that understand such; but, now, for land’s sake, give us a tune.”

Ethelyn was horror-stricken.  She had cast her pearls before swine; and with a haughty stare at the offending Timothy, she left the stool, and walking back to her former seat, said: