The Wilful Daughter by Georgia Daniels

along.
    “ I guess,” June spoke as she ran her hand through the grass, “I’m not in love yet. It’s just starting to feel like it because I think about him all the time.”
    “ How old is he, June?” he asked again as he felt the cool grass beneath him.
    She sighed. “He’s thirty-five years old. But he doesn’t look it.”
    “ Papa would never let you marry him. He’s an old man. You know you can’t marry him, Juney.” Willie tried to make her smile but she wouldn’t look at him.
    “ We’ll see, Willie. We’ll see.”
    Fawn ran down the hill past the rose bushes, peach and pear trees, and the fig tree that sometimes bore fruits. Quite undignified for a twenty-eight year old Sunday school teacher Willie thought.
    “ He’s here, June.” She was out of breath as she stopped holding her side.
    “ Who’s here?” Willie asked.
    “ The Piano Man, silly. The preacher brought him over to meet papa.” Her eyes widened. “June, he is so handsome, you should see him.”
    Without another word Fawn ran back again and June was not far behind her. She was almost to the fig tree when she turned to see that she had left her crippled brother alone. She turned and ran back to him.
    “ Willie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you.”
    Willie laughed loudly as she helped him to his crutches. “Yes you did. You know you did. You want to see him and get your clutches into him before the others do. Go ahead.”
    “ No.” June folded the blanket as he moved slowly along. “He can meet the whole family and that includes you. I’ll get to see him. Besides, he already knows me.”
    Willie hobbled along as fast as he could, sweating to get up to his basket so that he could pull himself up into the house instead of trying to make it up the hill. His sister loved him and would wait for him, but she was impatient to get to the man of her dreams. She didn’t leave his side until they reached the parlor of the house where the preacher sat next to their mother, and their father sat in his big chair while a handsome stranger played the piano.
    June squeezed Willie’s shoulder tighter than ever before as she watched her Piano Man. She led her brother to his chair, took his crutches as he sat, then stood dutifully behind him mesmerized, as was the rest of the family, by the music the man played.
    From the moment Willie laid eyes on the Piano Man he knew things were going to change. Never before had all his sisters been so infatuated with a figure of a man. Never had his mother’s attention been so drawn to the piano. And never, ever, had his father sat back and smiled so pleased.
    His music and his beauty filled the room. He was darker than all of them, and prettier (or was it handsomer?) than any man Willie had ever seen. His hands were not like the Blacksmith’s, hard, big and gnarled, but long and slender. His fingers played the keys with grace gliding back and forth without stretching as Rosa so often did when she tried to play a complicated piece. He did not look from the piano, did not notice the eyes of those watching him. Willie was sure this man and the piano were one the way the sound floated from his long hands into the air.
    Willie closed his eyes and listened for that was the only comfort he had left. This way he could enjoy what he heard without fearing what he saw. The look on his father’s face. Calculating, thinking. Willie kept his eyes closed for the music was so soothing, so beautiful. Like the gramophone he had. A present from papa when Willie had been so sick they thought he would die. Lovely tunes full of recorded static had calmed his breathing during the crisis. Now the same music was alive before him and he didn’t want to see it. He wanted to listen to it and be lost in it as it lulled him to sleep.
    The Piano Man finished and the Blacksmith was the first to applaud: “Beautiful! Wonderful!” Mama joined in as did the Preacher and the sisters.
    The Piano Man turned and for the first time