in the broad white road, carriages were passing, horses cantering,
happy-looking people in smart bonnets, in gorgeous mantles, driving about
everywhere; children would be running up and down the paths in the Park,
flower-sellers would stand offering their innocent wares to the
passengers. Jill would sit entranced by her mother's window watching
them; the sunshine, the glitter, the hubbub, intoxicated her; she made up
stories by the dozen, as her dark eyes followed the gay equipages. When
Fräulein summoned her she went away reluctantly; the stories got into
her head, and stopped there all the time she laboured through that long
sonata.

'Why are your fingers all thumbs to-day, Fräulein?' Herr Schliefer
would demand gloomily. Jill, who was really fond of the stern old
professor, hung her head and blushed guiltily. She had no excuse to
offer: her girlish dreams were sacred to her; they came gliding to her
through the most intricate passages of the sonata, now with a _staccato_
movement,--brisk, lively,--with fitful energy, now _andante_, then
_crescendo, con passione_. Jill's unformed girlish hands strike the
chords wildly, angrily. '_Dolce, dolce_,' screams the professor in her
ears. The music softens, wanes, and the dreams seem to die away too.
'That will do, Fräulein: you have not acquitted yourself so badly after
all.' And Jill gets off her music-stool reluctant, absent, half awake,
and her day-dream broken up into chaos.




CHAPTER III

CINDERELLA