Explore "Lucy Gayheart" by Willa Cather on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Lucy thought she ought to begin to study again, so she tried going to her father's shop every day and working on the sample piano. But Jacob Gayheart did not keep his ear open as he used to. He had gone backward in his music: he neglected it for chess. Soon after Christmas he had fallen away from playing duets with Lucy in the evening. He said he had to stay later at the shop, but his daughters knew that he was playing chess by telephone with a celebrated player who was visiting a cousin in North Platte. To be sure, he didn't often have a chance to match his skill with such an opponent.
Mr. Gayheart had let the shop get so dusty that it wasn't a pleasant place to practise in. The space round the piano was full of broken music-stands and brass instruments that were never cleaned, and the walls were hung with dusty band uniforms. It embarrassed Lucy when people came in for watches and clocks that should have been repaired weeks ago.