Page:Possession (1926).pdf/82

 Outside the storm persisted, increasing steadily in fury. And presently, Ellen said, "To-night Cousin Lily arrives, doesn't she?"

At which her mother regarded her sharply and paused in her darning to say, "Yes. But why do you ask? You talk of nothing but Lily."

And again Ellen answered, "I don't know. I simply want to see her."

Into the proud reflections of Mrs. Tolliver there entered from time to time thoughts of the most profound satisfaction over the part she had played in the existence of her children. In the beginning, even before they were born, she had determined for them careers which were to follow clearly demarcated lines. As a bride, after she had brought up her eight brothers and sisters and married at last the patient Charles Tolliver, she went, driven by eager duty, to a lecture given by a bearded man upon the things every mother should know. This doctor had told her that it was possible to begin even before birth to influence the characters of one's children, and so she had begun on that very night to plan their lives.

The first, she had decided, was to be a musician. It was a story which went back a long way into the days of Hattie Tolliver's own youth when she had longed in her passionate way to be a musician. But always there had been something to intervene—an invalid mother; and after her death the cares of a family of brothers and sisters and the management of her father's household, no easy task in those early days of great farms and broad lands. Yet in spite of these things she had managed to learn by sheer persistence something of the mysteries of the keyboard, and out of these she had woven on the melodeon of the old farmhouse the tunes of a few hymns, the Ninety and Nine, and snatches of The Blue Danube. So before Ellen was born, these fragments were revived and brought into service once more to be played over and over again on the upright piano purchased in the early years of her husband's prosperity. Thus, with the support of a