"I think I could pick out tunes, if I had any instrument, which could be
made as handy to me as my lace-pillow. But I dare say I deceive myself.
At all events, I shall never know."

"You have a musical voice. Excuse me; I have heard you sing."

"With the children?" she answered, slightly colouring. "Oh yes. I sing
with the dear children, if it can be called singing."

Barbox Brothers glanced at the two small forms in the room, and hazarded
the speculation that she was fond of children, and that she was learned
in new systems of teaching them?

"Very fond of them," she said, shaking her head again; "but I know
nothing of teaching, beyond the interest I have in it, and the pleasure
it gives me when they learn. Perhaps your overhearing my little scholars
sing some of their lessons has led you so far astray as to think me a
grand teacher? Ah! I thought so! No, I have only read and been told
about that system. It seemed so pretty and pleasant, and to treat them
so like the merry Robins they are, that I took up with it in my little
way. You don't need to be told what a very little way mine is, sir," she
added with a glance at the small forms and round the room.

All this time her hands were busy at her lace-pillow. As they still
continued so, and as there was a kind of substitute for conversation in
the click and play of its pegs, Barbox Brothers took the opportunity of
observing her. He guessed her to be thirty. The charm of her
transparent face and large bright brown eyes was, not that they were
passively resigned, but that they were actively and thoroughly cheerful.