BOOK THIRD.

THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT.

CHAPTER I.

“ONE—­TWO—­THBEE—­FOUR.”

Pet studied hard, and made great progress.  Her father and Marcus Wilkeson watched her developing education with equal pride, and constantly applauded and encouraged her.

The inventor did not know one word of French beyond the colloquial phrases with which everybody is familiar; but he would ask his daughter to read the crisp and tinkling tongue to him for hours at a time.  He would hammer softly and file gently as she read, so that he might not lose a word of it.  He would hear no news but that which she translated from the triweekly French paper published in the city.  With correct and careful tuition at Miss Pillbody’s, these constant exercises at home, ambition, and an excellent memory for languages, Pet was soon able not only to satisfy her teacher, but to make herself understood, in a small way, by a real French woman, Mdlle.  Duchette, the forewoman of a candy store on the nearest business avenue.

Pet followed every lesson on the piano at Miss Pillbody’s by three hours of daily practice at home.  Marcus had hired for her a small piano, warranted to be just the thing for beginners.  In other words, the keys and pedals were nearly worn out, and could not be much further damaged by unpractised hands and feet.  This instrument was squeezed in between the bureau and the washstand, filling up the last spare place in the crowded little room.  Pet wanted to have it set up in the next apartment, and practise there in the cold, alone; but neither her father nor Marcus would listen to that proposition for a moment.

Mr. Minford’s nerves were extremely sensitive to sound.  They vibrated to it, like Aeolian harp in the wind.  He placed pianos, cats, fish peddlers, and hand organs on precisely the same footing, as nuisances.  Nothing but the ruling desire to make a lady of his child, could have steeled him to the endurance, hour after hour, of her monotonous “One—­two—­three—­four,” and the discordant banging which accompanied those plaintive utterances.

The permanent discords with which the piano was afflicted, or the striking of a false note, would sometimes set his teeth on edge; but he would only hold his jaws tightly together, beat time with his head, and smile a hypocritical approval.  Sometimes he would torture himself playfully, and make Pet laugh, by running a musical opposition with his three-cornered file—­a small but effective instrument.

Marcus Wilkeson was equally tolerant of Pet’s practice, and there was little false pretence in the patience with which he listened.  Happily, he was not all alive to sounds.  Screeches and harmonies were pretty much the same to him.  Since he was a boy, he had been trying (privately) to sing, or whistle, “Auld Lang Syne,” and had not yet mastered the first bar of it.  He watched Pet’s little fingers moving up and down the piano with mechanical repetition, and was truly interested in the sight—­for two reasons:  first, the motion was graceful; and second, she was acquiring an accomplishment which he held in the highest esteem, because Nature had put it entirely beyond his reach.