Now she merely repeated in an agony: "Oh, please don't make me play! I shall break down. I know I shall break down. It would terrify me to disappoint you."

To which Miss Strickland replied: "Don't be idiotic. I have decided upon Mendelssohn."

The school at Little Ticklington gave particularly good concerts. Besides the parents, the mayor sometimes appeared, with several town councilors, the vicar, who was an archdeacon, and various people in the neighborhood who thought education ought to be encouraged and that their presence at school concerts encouraged it.

Miss Strickland sat at the back of the hall, so that she could hear it the songs carried. She had prepared all the girls carefully, and Miss Saunders, who lived in the school, would supervise them on the platform.

Miss Strickland had not seen Elsie for three days. At her last lesson she had played the Mendelssohn uncommonly well, but she had annoyed Miss Strickland by opening and shutting her mouth like a fish. Miss Strickland had told her so, and Elsie had then shut her mouth and kept it shut; but Miss Strickland had still been annoyed. She was aware of something in the child that was not consenting to her will, and this was very unusual.

Children must play at concerts. Elsie was now fourteen; she was a big girl, and the Mendelssohn was very easy. Miss Strickland told herself these reassuring facts several times before the curtain swung vacillatingly back for the first girl to perform. "Besides," Miss Strickland hastily informed herself, "I take no special interest in Elsie."

The first girl performed as first girls generally do. She was chosen for her hardihood, and she had a little overestimated it. Still she banged pleasantly away, and while she was too nervous to remember any of the finer shades of Miss Strickland's careful teaching, she played no wrong notes, and covered up the weakness of her execution with that merciful solvent of piano-forte puzzles, the loud pedal down. Miss Strickland mentally provided for

this young criminal a castigation of the direct kind short of direct profanity. Only men, who deserve it, may have the relief of an entire language to devote to wrath. Miss Strickland had to rely upon the fervency of her emotion. Then she listened to a bad recitation with the grim patience of a teacher who is not involved in the subject.

After this there were several excellent and charming songs with choruses. Miss Strickland had taught them to the school, and in one case had written the song herself. They went with a vim, and gave her a certain amount of very slight pleasure. Then Elsie appeared.

She was dressed in a heavy white muslin dress that revealed her thick ankles and pitilessly broad-toed shoes.

It was the wrong kind of muslin, trimmed with tawdry embroidery, and girt about the untamed breadth of her waist by a harsh blue sash. Her hair lay lankly down her back, evading where it could the ministrations of a similarly harsh blue ribbon.

Elsie moved heavily, and stared at the audience with the eyes of a sleep-walker.

Miss Strickland had particularly told Elsie to keep her mouth shut, her head up, and her chin in. The results of these attempts upon the figure are usually beneficial to young performers, but nothing could do much for Elsie's figure; it remained thick and uncertain, with a tendency to bulge in the wrong places

When she saw Elsie, Miss Strickland felt an unusual pang of depression, fol- · lowed by a much more usual one of rage.

Elsie sat down clumsily on the musicstool. It was lower than she had expected it to be. Miss Sanders, the young music teacher, adjusted the Mendelssohn.

It was "The Venetian Boat-Song," and is considered the easiest and lightest of concert pieces.

Elsie played the first two bars faultlessly. Miss Strickland was about to breathe a sigh of relief when, to her horror, the girl stopped abruptly and took her hands off the piano. Then she played the first two bars over again, and stopped again.

There was a long silence in the hall, breathless, inconvenient silence, and then Elsie turned slowly on her music-stool away from the piano and faced the audience. She looked like a person delivering herself into the hands of Indians for torture. She faced the people with her hands in her lap, and her eyes fixed not so much appealingly as hopelessly upon the audi

ence.

She did not cry; it was the expression of an immovable despair. She neither stirred nor spoke; she only looked straight in front of her, as if she saw the end of hope.

Miss Strickland felt as if the child's gaze fixed itself upon her heart. Before she had time to move, Miss Sanders had stepped forward at a sign from Miss Bretherton and led Elsie away. It was obviously impossible for any one who looked like that to play "The Venetian Boat-Song."

Miss Sanders, who wanted Elsie to enjoy her tea afterward, led her to the back row of little girls. Elsie went with her passively, and sank into her seat like a thing frozen.

Miss Strickland had once watched a baby rabbit holding itself together to look like a leaf; its fear had fixed it into the landscape. Elsie looked like that. She did not move for half an hour; she was as anxious as the baby rabbit to escape all observation.

Miss Strickland decided to do the same. She took her tea on the lawn and ate some particularly good strawberries without enjoying them.

Then she went to look for Elsie. There were very few places where Elsie had any right to be. She was n't in the empty school-room, or in a small anteroom used by the teachers before they went into their classes. She was in the dressing-room, behind a curtain, lying on the boots and shoes.

It was only by the faintest of creaks that

A group of charmingly dressed girls came on to the stage and danced. There were no more hitches. Everything was beautifully done, and when it was over, Elsie asked if she might go and rest. She said she had a headache.

Miss Sanders, who was sympathetic and did n't know what else to say, agreed readily. The other girls stared at Elsie,

her presence was disclosed to Miss Strickland. She lay there in a crumpled heap of muslin and anguish, sobbing as if her heart would break.

It was very pitiful to see her. Miss Strickland knelt down by Elsie's side and

boots!" she exclaimed sharply. This was better. Elsie sat up, and made an enormous effort to control herself; but the

sobs had got possession of her, and shook her down among the boots again. Miss Strickland frowned.

"It's all my fault," she found herself saying. "I ought not to have made you play, and you really must n't be SO distressed about it. People often make mistakes. One can retrieve them. I dare say," she went on merci

fully, but without accuracy "I dare say I 've broken down myself before now, but I should

a flaw. She had disliked many occurrences, but she had felt equal to them, whether she disliked them or not. She did not feel equal to what was happening

n't give way about it. I know that it was not carelessness on your part. On the contrary, you were trying too hard."

"Oh," gasped Elsie, "don't you hate me? You must, I know you must! You see I can't-I 'm no good. I never was any good, and I never shall be. I'm like that!"

Miss Strickland was shocked. She disliked over-confidence, over-confident people always do, but this child's formidable hopelessness was worse than any overconfidence. She was behaving as if there were a flaw in the universe, and in Miss Strickland's universe there had never been

action was the most sensible to take. An instinct told her what to do, but she was not used to instincts, and felt flurried by having one. Her instinct told her to take the child in her arms. She compromised

with it, and kissed Elsie a little reluctantly on the cheek.

"I don't hate you at all, child," she said kindly. "You're a very good, painstaking little girl."

Then Miss Strickland arrived at the nearest she was ever likely to get to a miracle.

She saw a plain little girl, made plainer by a convulsive fit of crying, turn perfectly beautiful. It was like watching a black and wind-swept country yielding to the sun. Across Elsie's face light spread-the light of a great gratitude, a preposterous faith, an overwhelming love.

Her eyes met Miss Strickland's, and held hers almost against her will.

"Then," the child said slowly, "I 'm glad I broke down."

It was the truth, and Miss Strickland, with her love of truth, should have recognized it; but she had already recognized a great deal more than it was at all comfortable to recognize. She really could n't go on recognizing things which were so far from sensible, whether they were true or

not.

"Well, don't let us have any more nonsense," she said briskly. "Wipe your eyes, and brush, as far as you can, the dust off your frock. You really should not have lain down on boots and shoes; it was most unsuitable. You'd better come and see Miss Bretherton. She has been asking about you on the lawn, and she 's no more angry with you than I am."

Miss Strickland hesitated. Head mistresses always matter. Still, she had pressed the point about Elsie's playing, and it has proved a mistake. Onoria made a point of learning from her mistakes when she saw them. Perhaps it was better to waive the point. The child looked dreadful. She could make excuses for her to Miss Bretherton, and excuses are tidier and more malleable than tear-stained little girls.

"Very well," Miss Strickland said at last, "you may go home if you want to." But there was something in Elsie's eyes that still held hers.

"If I might," whispered Elsie, bravely, "play you 'The Venetian Boat-Song' before I go."

Miss Strickland nodded. She led the way into a small practice-room, out of reach of the festivities on the lawn. Then she sat down on a hard cane chair and listened to the "Venetian Boat-Song" for perhaps the five hundredth time. It did not sound at all familiar to her.

Elsie played it as Miss Strickland had never heard it played before. For the only time in her life music was captured by Elsie's faithful, clumsy little fingers. She played it dreamily, tenderly, with ardor and grace, as Mendelssohn himself, who had the heart of a child, might have played it. There was a little silence after the last notes sounded.

"That," Elsie explained as she turned around slowly on her music-stool, "was the way I had meant to play it."