Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/273

 indulgence. She played Beethoven sonatas and Mendelssohn Songs Without Words, in her own way, which was a much better way than any one had yet discovered. Her mother's mother had recently died, leaving each of her grandchildren a legacy of five hundred dollars, and Mary Anne intended using it for music lessons whenever she should "get time." The money, meanwhile, had been placed in the savings bank, where it might increase itself to this excellent end.

But one day Tom came begging, and before he left her she had loaned him her $500, for a secret purpose which he could not reveal, but which he was "sure she would approve." Tom was in a banker's office, and had doubtless heard of a promising investment, and nothing could have seemed more natural than that he should have the use of her money.

One fine evening in April Mary Anne found herself mistress of the house and of her own time. Her father had taken his wife and two of his daughters to hear Christine Nilsson sing. The two youngest children were in bed, and the rest of the family were scattered in one or another direction. The evening was mild and the house rather warm. Mary Anne opened the parlor windows, lighted the candles in the brackets of the old square piano, and fell to practising the Moonlight Sonata. Untutored as she was, there was nothing ordinary or slipshod in the girl's playing. What she lacked in technique