Page:Our Little Girl (1923).pdf/19

 look at any of her other toys, only at the piano, and cried when we tried to take her away from it. Our Dorothy loves music, she would not be a Reitz if she did not. I am saving up a little sum so that our darling may take music lessons at an early age. Uncle Elliott says, ‘As the twig is bent, so the leaf will fall.’”

The presence of a hostile critic came to light a year later.

“Papa does not think that baby is musical. He is mistaken. One should not judge others by oneself. Baby is always happy when she plays her toy piano. She likes to have me sing to her and she can tell pieces of sheet music apart. Papa says she cries when he sings. I have a little joke on papa however because any one might cry when he sings.”

The matter was settled definitely in the following year. “Uncle Elliott has made baby and me very happy. He brought baby a fine new toy piano for her birthday, all the paint was off the old one and several keys broken. Baby was very happy and said “Thank you, Uncle Elly’ many times and could not be taken from her fine new gift. Uncle Elliott says baby has a wonderful ear for music, she is a little Mozart. Mozart, he says also had a wonderful ear for music when young.”

Professor Abendschein stepped into the pages of Darling’s Diary on her fifth birthday.

“We have found.a teacher for Dorothy, Professor Abendschein, he is highly recommended and most reasonable. He says she has a wonderful ear, which I have always maintained and that she will make a fine pianist. May she never lose her love for music. If I had practised when I was young I might have become a good performer but now my fingers are stiff and I have no time to practise but this will not be the case with