CHAPTER XLVII.
ANOTHER CHANGE.
For some time Tom made progress toward health, and was able to read a good part of the day.

Most evenings he asked Joseph to play to him for a while; he was fond of music, and fonder still of criticism--upon anything.

When he had done with Joseph, or when he did not want him, Mary was always ready to give the latter a lesson; and, had he been a less gifted man than he was, he could not have failed to make progress with such a teacher.
The large-hearted, delicate-souled woman felt nothing strange in the presence of the workingman, but, on the contrary, was comfortably aware of a being like her own, less privileged but more gifted, whose nearness was strength.

And no teacher, not to say no woman, could have failed to be pleased at the thorough painstaking with which he followed the slightest of her hints, and the delight his flushed face would reveal when she praised the success he had achieved.
It was not long before he began to write some of the things that came into his mind.

For the period of quiescence as to production, which followed the initiation of more orderly study, was, after all, but of short duration, and the return tide of musical utterance was stronger than ever.