Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/294

 had always fallen upon her young shoulders. Her father had no idea where his salary went. She had cooked the meals, washed the dishes, kept the house in order. The social life of the college town had been closed doors to her. The boys had naturally sought, with the careless cruelty of their kind, those girls who had pretty dresses, leisure, and who knew how to dance. What was it to them that she could play the Second Symphony if, on the other hand, she did not know the latest ragtime? She was pretty; but her hands were always red from housework and her dresses made-overs. Only two things had she plucked from this dreary life—education and music—and these haphazardly, due primarily to the kindness of the German professor of music, who loved the father and understood the child. And then one day she had been thrown upon her own resources, unceremoniously, by death. When the little estate was settled up, the trifling insurance paid, the furniture sold, and the debts wiped out, there was for her a meager nine hundred dollars to begin the real battle of life with.

She hated the small city where she had known nothing but penury and humiliation, and so went to the metropolis.

For ten years she had studied under the loving care of the old Bavarian music-master, who, back in Munich, had ranked among the greatest instructors of his time. Finding himself too deeply involved in political intrigue, he had stolen away to America. He had discovered the soul in Ruth,