We shook hands with the old lady and as we came away she said:
“When you can find nothing better worth doing come and see me.”
“Well, she is the real thing,” said I as we got out of hearing.
“Ninety-nine years young and growing younger every year. Think of her hobnobbing with a play actor. I wonder who he was.”
“Why, but aren’t actors all right?” asked Ethel.
“Yes, they are if they are, but you don’t know what it meant for her, brought up as she had been, to acknowledge that an actor might be a good man. It showed great independence of mind.”
“And the kings might well feel honoured.”
We walked slowly back as Ethel was trying to see how many kinds of wild flowers she could pick. Mrs. Dana’s book had had an effect upon her she had not anticipated and I was afraid that she was going to become a botanist and talk about pistils and stamens, and things.
I believe she had picked twenty-five different “weeds,” as the farmers thereabouts called them, when she stopped and stood erect and listened.
“Is it a piano,” said I, not willing to believe the evidence of my ears. We were about ten rods from our house and there is not another house nearer than a quarter of a mile and no piano within a half mile.
“It certainly is a piano and in our house,” said she.
What we had heard were preliminary chords and now to a bang-bang accompaniment we heard the pleasing lyric, “Hannah, Won’t You Open That Door,” and recognized the voice as that of James.
“First a crimson rambler and now a piano,” said I. “I suppose he planted a few keys and the piano sprang up quickly.”
“It means,” said I, “that, however it may have happened, we have a piano in the house and Cherry can play when she comes.”
We now noticed wheel tracks, some of them on our lawn and we knew that James had not worked a miracle but that the piano had come to the house by _very_ human agencies. A broken plant showed where a horse’s hoof had toyed with it.
Our appearance on the path was the signal for the music to stop and Minerva came to the door perfectly radiant.
“It’s come, ma’am. The pianner has come,” said she, her eyes dancing with delight.
“I do’no’, sir,” said he. “I found it here when I come up to the house.”
She looked me in the eye and then she gave one of her chuckles.