teaching from books ended.

Of other and practical teaching, however, she had a greater store. Mr.
Linton had a strong leaning towards the old-fashioned virtues, and it
was at a word from him that Norah had gone to the kitchen and asked Mrs.
Brown to teach her to cook. Mrs. Brown--fat, good-natured and
adoring--was all acquiescence, and by the time Norah was eleven she knew
more of cooking and general housekeeping than many girls grown up and
fancying themselves ready to undertake houses of their own. Moreover,
she could sew rather well, though she frankly detested the
accomplishment. The one form of work she cared for was knitting, and it
was her boast that her father wore only the socks she manufactured for
him.

Norah's one gentle passion was music. Never taught, she inherited from
her mother a natural instinct and an absolutely true ear, and before she
was seven she could strum on the old piano in a way very satisfying to
herself and awe-inspiring to the admiring nurse. Her talent increased
yearly, and at ten she could play anything she heard--from ear, for she
had never been taught a note of music. It was, indeed, her growing
capabilities in this respect that forced upon her father the need for
proper tuition for the child. However, a stopgap was found in the person
of the book-keeper, a young Englishman, who knew more of music than
accounts. He readily undertook Norah's instruction, and the lessons bore
moderately good effect--the moderation being due to a not unnatural
disinclination on the pupil's part to walk where she had been accustomed
to run, and to a fixed loathing to practice. As the latter necessary, if
uninteresting, pursuit was left entirely to her own discretion--for no
one ever dreamed of ordering Norah to the piano--it is small wonder if
it suffered beside the superior attractions of riding Bobs, rat