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 the best. She took lessons in that respect for two years over at Birdstail. I wouldn’t trust the buying of an instrument to anybody else but myself. I reckon if I hadn’t took up sheep-raising I’d have been one of the finest composers or piano-and-organ manufacturers in the world.’

“That was Uncle Cal’s style. But I never lost any patience with him, on account of his thinking so much of Marilla. And she thought just as much of him. He sent her to the academy over at Birdstail for two years when it took nearly every pound of wool to pay the expenses.

“Along about Tuesday Uncle Cal put out for San Antone on the last wagonload of wool. Marilla’s uncle Ben, who lived in Birdstail, come over and stayed at the ranch while Uncle Cal was gone.

“It was ninety miles to San Antone, and forty to the nearest railroad-station, so Uncle Cal was gone about four days. I was over at the Double-Elm when he come rolling back one evening about sundown. And up there in the wagon, sure enough, was a piano or a organ—we couldn’t tell which—all wrapped up in woolsacks, with a wagon-sheet tied over it in case of rain. And out skips Marilla, hollering, ‘Oh, oh!’ with her eyes shining and her hair a-flying. ‘Dad—dad,’ she sings out, ‘have you brought it—have you brought it?’—and it right there before her eyes, as women will do.

“‘Finest piano in San Antone,’ says Uncle Cal,