she might be said never to let go of it. She possessed, in addition, the much rarer power of disposing other people to hold theirs, at least while in her company; in general she was chilly, dignified, austere, and, upon occasion, had no difficulty in being deaf as well as dumb.
But she was “no trouble” to Mrs. Callender; her modest dues were discharged with the utmost punctuality; and, whatever uncertainty might otherwise hang mistily about her, her musical ability at least was positive as daylight itself. The fame of it spread quickly abroad through that district of scattered farms, in which pianos, acquired sometimes as a proof of “getting on,” sometimes in the hope of it, were far more plentiful than players; and she had soon no lack of pupils. Many of them would gladly have come to her, but she drily discouraged all such suggested inroads on her seclusion, and chose instead, mounted upon a staid and serviceable old grey horse, to plod her way, all day long and every day, between farm and farm, from pupil to pupil.
A singular choice of life for an elderly woman, and scarcely, one would think, congenial; for nearly all the learners were the most absolute beginners, and their fingers, already past the first suppleness, were coarsened, moreover, with housework; besides which, not one of them, so far as I could discover, ever entertained any musical ambition beyond that of being able to play waltzes and lancers at the monthly socials. Whether this was altogether the fault of the pupils, though, who is to say? By all accounts, Miss Kirkcaldie would not seem to have troubled to bring with her into
