Isabella's great but unspoken pride, the child had been "bidden to the
manse for the minister's wife to hear her sing;" and from that day there
was a new vista in Little Bel's life.

Her voice was sweet as a lark's and as pure, and her passionate love
for music a gift in itself. "It would be a sin not to cultivate it,"
said Mrs. Allan to her husband, "even if she never sees another piano
than mine, nor has any other time in her life except these few years to
enjoy it; she will always have had these, and nothing can separate her
from her voice."

And so it came to pass that when, at sixteen, Little Bel went to
Charlottetown for her final two years of study at the High School, she
played almost as well as Mrs. Allan herself, and sang far better. And in
all Isabella McDonald's day-dreams of the child's future, vague or
minute, there was one feature never left out. The "good husband" coming
always was to be a man who could "give her a piano."

In Charlottetown Bel found no such friend as Mrs. Allan; but she had a
young school-mate who had a piano, and--poor short-sighted creature that
she was, Bel thought--hated the sight of it, detested to practise, and
shed many a tear over her lessons. This girl's parents were thankful to
see their daughter impressed by Bel's enthusiasm for music; and so well
did the clever girl play her cards that before she had been six months
in the place, she was installed as music-teacher to her own
schoolfellow, earning thereby not only money enough to buy the few
clothes she needed, but, what to her was better than money, the
privilege of the use of the piano an hour a day.

So when she went home, at the end of the two years, she had lost