Mrs. Peters had learned to play the piano when she was at school, but when she had begun to work, she had lived in a very small flat, and there had been no room for a piano. She was sad about this, but there was nothing she could do about it, however much she tried.
Then, when she was twenty-three, she married, and she and her husband went to live in a bigger flat. "I`m going to buy myself a nice little piano now," Mrs. Peters said to her husband, "and I`m going to begin to practice again."
Her husband was happy, because he liked listening to the piano.
So Mrs. Peters saved some money, and her husband helped her, and her parents gave her a generous amount of money for her birthday and told her to buy whatever she wanted with it, so she soon had enough for a small piano. She went to a shop in her town and said, "I`ll choose whichever piano does not cost too much and fits into my living room."
She did this, and when she had paid for the piano and given the shop assistant her address, he asked her whether she would like him to get it tuned every few months.
Mrs. Peters said that she would, so a few months later she heard from the shop that a man [bad word] to tune the piano at a quarter to ten that morning.
Now, Mrs. Peters had not cleaned the house yet, so it was fairly dusty and untidy, and there was cigarette ash on the car­pet. Mrs. Peters hated having even the least amount of dirt, and felt ashamed whenever strange people saw her house like that, so she had to hurry to clean everything carefully. It meant a lot of effort, and it made her hot and tired, but anyhow, by the time the man arrived to tune the piano at exactly a quarter to ten, everything was finished.
Mrs. Peters opened the door, and the man was standing there with a big dog. "Good morning," the man said as he took his cap off politely, "will it disturb you if I bring my dog in, please? I`m blind, and he leads me wherever I go."