Music was a favorite subject with Ingred, and one in which she excelled.
She would willingly have given more time to it, had the school
curriculum allowed. She was a good reader, and had a sympathetic, if
rather spidery touch. This term she had begun lessons with Dr. Linton,
who was considered the best master in Grovebury. He was organist at the
Abbey Church, and was not only a Doctor of Music, but a composer as
well. His anthems and cantatas were widely known, he conducted the local
choral society and trained the operatic society for the annual
performance. His time was generally very full, so he did not profess to
teach juniors; it was only after celebrating her fifteenth birthday that
Ingred had been eligible as one of his pupils. He had the reputation of
being peppery tempered, therefore she walked into the room to take her
first lesson with her heart performing a sort of jazz dance under her
jersey. Dr. Linton, like many musicians, was of an artistic and
excitable temperament, and highly eccentric. Instead of sitting by the
side of his new pupil, he paced the room, pursing his lips in and out,
and drawing his fingers through his long lank dark hair.

"Have you brought a piece with you," he inquired. "Then play to me. Oh,
never mind if you make mistakes! That's not the point. I want to know
how you can talk on the piano. What have you got in that folio?
Beethoven? Rachmaninoff? M'Dowell? We'll try the Beethoven. Now don't be
nervous. Just fire away as if you were practising at home!"

It was all very well, Ingred thought, for Dr. Linton to tell her not to
be nervous, but it was a considerable ordeal to have to perform a test
piece before so keen a critic. In spite of her most valiant efforts her
hands trembled, and wrong chords crept in. She kept bravely at it,
however, and managed to reach the end of the first movement, where she
called a halt.