If Miss Clergy and Thurley were mysteries to the hotel guests and attendants, so were the guests and attendants mysteries untold to Thurley and Miss Clergy. To be placed suddenly in New York with unlimited leeway in opportunities and money, cut off from every simple, human tie which heretofore had impressed itself on one’s emotional heart and be put to work at such a multitude of things that one could hardly remember which hour was designated for this and which for that—to say the very least, it was “tizzy,” as Hobart obligingly expressed it for Thurley during one of their lessons.

No less “tizzy” was it for Miss Clergy to waken from a selfish lethargy, with revenge the stimulating impulse; to try, all in an instant, to find her way back to the proper method of living combined with modern requirements and readjustments; to become accustomed to strange noises, vehicles, buildings, all manner of new and bewildering novelties which every one else, save her wild-rose Thurley, accepted as commonplace; to refrain from telling every one who talked with her the reason she had taken this homeless country girl to New York and was prepared to spend a fortune to make her a success.

The modistes and milliners used to gossip about it, after they had been in Miss Clergy’s rooms to take measurements and orders. So did the bootmaker Hobart had sent up, and the riding master and the language teacher and the social secretary, who somehow slipped into her place and became one of them. A veritable monument to fashion and smartness she was, with the way of making one sit up straight when one was least expecting the command, of smoothing out personal pronouns to the ease of every one concerned, who found time every day to make Thurley practise entering and leaving a room, bowing, shaking hands, smiling, laughing, holding her head just so, who had stacks of hateful cards and sheets of paper on which Thurley must write invitations to imaginary dinners and affairs and then reply to the invitations, who told one that the easiest way to carry on a conversation was to be an excellent listener, and yet, all in the same breath, made one memorize certain smart phrases or witty bon mots, historical dates of importance, soothing sentences which would fit in for the weather, a clay pigeon match or the assassination of the president—all these things and more did the social secretary achieve, Thurley groaning inwardly as the hour approached for her arrival.

Yet she stumbled through her lessons without bringing down too many frowns on her young shoulders, and when she sat at the improvised dinner table with a startling array of crystal glasses, goblets and small silver, and was requested to demonstrate the use of each, the social secretary nodded approval in a short time and said one day in that well-bred, monotonous voice,

“You’re so shockingly bright, Miss Precore, I’m sure there’s a scandal in the family somewhere,” laughing outright at Thurley’s embarrassment.

“Have you really had people more stupid than I?” she demanded.

“Dear, yes! My last two pupils were twins, Golda and Silva Muggins from New Mexico. It would take a regiment to count their fortunes—but their manners!” She shrugged her trim shoulders. “And yet they both are engaged and doing nicely—I’m to finish buying the trousseaux to-morrow.”

“What frightful work to teach—” Thurley began. At which the social secretary fled lest Thurley entangle her in a really human vein of conversation and endanger her poise.

Following these lessons Miss Clergy would have Thurley come into her room and have her repeat all she had learned, after which Thurley would manage to escape to her own bedroom to burst into rebellious, beautiful song. For singing at the present time seemed to be of the least importance of all the things she did!

A gymnast came each morning before breakfast and made her exercise and do folk dances, all manner of antics strange and, to her mind, ludicrous. There was a beauty doctor who did her nails and took charge of her hair and skin, showing her which colors were becoming and which were not and the test for any woman in doubt as to the proper shade to wear—to lay a strip of the proposed goods across the hair, not the throat or cheek, as women fondly delude themselves—and see if the light and effect are to be desired.

“How many teachers does one great big girl need, Aunt Abby?” Thurley said, six weeks after Hobart had told her the little story of the peanut and the banana. “How do they think one brain can remember everything? How do you know Mr. Hobart isn’t going to be disappointed after all? He has never said a word about my voice since that first day, just scales and horrid nasal exercises and that grimy little Bohemian man to take me in tow half the time.... I’m dead tired, that’s the truth—” She flung herself down in characteristic fashion beside Miss Clergy. She wanted some one to ruffle up her hair affectionately or whisper there would be a chestnut party that afternoon near Wood’s Hollow. And here the memory of Dan Birge would steal in, an unwelcome yet paramount personage, so she jumped up and ran over to the window.

“You can’t disappoint me,” Miss Clergy protested. “Mr. Hobart has said you wouldn’t.”

“Really?” Her face flushed. “Why, he’s never mentioned it—”

“It’s a secret,” Miss Clergy added childishly. “Don’t give me away. Most girls have to study for years and go abroad, but Mr. Hobart wants to prove that an American trained girl can be as great a prima donna as one who enters the stage by way of Vienna or Paris. Come back, Thurley, I want to tell you something.” She held out her arms as stiltedly as a marionette.

Thurley obeyed.

“I want you to be happy because you will be both rich and famous. Isn’t that enough?” Her bright eyes peered into Thurley’s face.

“You mean because I’ll keep my vow to you about not marrying—and I ought to be satisfied to have the other things?”

“Maybe so. I’m a queer old woman and I choose to live the rest of my queer old life as I please. But I saved you from the terrible, but common fate—marrying a small-town bully and being a faded drudge. We’ll leave that for the minister’s daughter.”

“But Dan would never marry Lorraine—why—” Thurley paused. She was remembering the day Lorraine had brought her the embroidered set. How very sweet was Betsey Pilrig’s garden, far sweeter than the imported scent they had her use! How lovely and peaceful were the green fields which stretched as far as eye could see ... not tall, dirty buildings with myriads of shaded windows, each concealing some human being with woes and longings greater than her own! How lovely was the old box-car, the first home the girl had known! She had worn pink linen that day Lorraine came! She had paid for it by extra lessons given in South Wales, and Dan had sent her the sash for a surprise. How simple but how sane it all had been! She glanced at her blue velvet frock trimmed with moleskin—“so ultra,” they murmured when they fitted it. Perhaps this was the better way.

Miss Clergy caught the drift of her thoughts and the withered hand closed firmly over Thurley’s. “If he did marry her, you’d be glad to dance at the wedding, wouldn’t you?” she insisted.

The actress in Thurley rescued her so that she could say, “Of course, that’s all left behind. No use being like a story-book girl unless you have a s-story-book heart. Now it’s time for Mr. Hobart’s lesson, mia, so I’m off. I wish you’d let me walk sometimes or take a subway! I’m tired of being whirled away in taxis! Why, I haven’t even had a moment alone at Grant’s Tomb,” laughing in spite of herself.

Miss Clergy smiled. “I’m so proud of you!” she declared. “If I had only found you years ago—”

“I tried to find you,” Thurley reminded.

“Ah, but you didn’t sing that day! If you had, everything would have changed for us both. When you sing, Thurley, the world is yours—”

Thurley was at the mirror fitting on a high black hat with a bunch of old-blue plumes. “Do you think any one would love me, if I could not sing?” she demanded impetuously.

Miss Clergy became confused. “Dear me, Thurley, I cannot think of you as separate from your voice. There would be no Thurley if there were no Thurley voice.”

Thurley trilled a scale or so. She was thinking of a black-haired lad who had said many’s the time, “Hang your voice, Thurley! It’s you I love—just you!” Pink linen and old-fashioned parlor organs did have compensations.

“When you come back, we’ll plan about our real home,” Miss Clergy added. “My lawyers try to impress on me what a neglectful person I’ve been. They want me to mend my ways and spend my money—not be a sort of Hetty Green always travelling about with a little satchel of securities!” Miss Clergy’s sense of humor was reviving with the rest.

“Our real home—besides the Fincherie? You’ll never give that up?”

Miss Clergy frowned. “Not the Fincherie! I mean here in New York. We can’t go on living in a hotel. It is too common, too parvenu. I want the right sort of home for you, the sort that your ability will deserve.”

Thurley was in the doorway. “I beg you will do nothing of the sort,” she said. “You have loaded me now with the treasures of Arabia. I beg you will not! I want to earn things myself—as I did at the Corners—you must let me. Being supported takes something out of me, I don’t know what,” she clasped her hands in her rapt fashion. “I’d rather live in a tiny room, or a box-car, you know, and have very skimpy meals and old-style clothes and study hard and forget the meals and clothes and then earn the beautiful, lovely things. That would make me feel right, ’way inside.”

Miss Clergy’s withered face lost some of its haunted expression. “Well, my dear, you shall wait then and earn your home, but I am afraid that, if it is quite your own home, you will not want to share it with a funny old per—”

At which Thurley flew across the room and put her fresh cheek against the faded one to promise with the enthusiasm of untried youth that the home she should earn would be but half her home, for the other half would belong to a certain dear person.

Whirling towards the studio, Thurley drew Betsey Pilrig’s letter from her bag. It was the second letter she had had from the Corners, for Betsey Pilrig undertook writing a letter with the same solemn preparation that most people give to making a will. It required several days of deciding “what to say to her” and a battle against natural inertia before she could sit at the red-covered dining-table and force her toil-worn fingers to write in cramped characters unreal-sounding phrases. Besides, Betsey Pilrig had always sealed letters with the firm conviction that maybe they would never get there anyway, letters seemed such queer things to go flying about the country.

Not that Betsey had not thought of Thurley every hour in the day, standing in the doorway of her house and of the Fincherie to picture again the blue-eyed young goddess dancing imperiously up the walk or sitting under gnarled apple trees to shell peas or peel potatoes, singing in glorious tones as she did so.

When Thurley’s letters had come to Betsey, she and Hopeful read them aloud to Ali Baba and the trio sat discussing the fate of their songbird. To their minds the “happening” was still something to be talked of with suspicion. One does not fancy a “ghost” taking a beloved child to the city, never to return, and being responsible, so it had become known, for Dan Birge’s broken heart and his mad engagement to Lorraine.

“She’ll never come back the same,” Ali Baba would insist.

“Abby Clergy will leave her every nickel,” Hopeful would supplement. “Then she’s bound to come back and lord it over Dan Birge.”

“She’ll be a great singer—God love and keep her,” was Betsey’s plea.

As Thurley broke the seal on the letter, she felt as if she wanted to drive to the station willy-nilly to take the first train to the Corners, to come into the emporium and, upon seeing Dan, say that she was “sorry” and she still wanted him to plan for the new house ... but she was on her way to Bliss Hobart’s studio, envied of the envied, dressed as a “princess,” with strange wisdom concerning many things making inroads into her simple heart.

She read the letter hastily:

The driver was opening the door for Thurley to leave the cab. After a moment she handed him a bill, threading her way through the crowd until she reached the studio building. She wondered if Hobart would notice her manner and comment on it; if she could manage to get through her lesson without breaking down. Dan and Lorraine engaged—with her ring—and it would be Lorraine’s house with the sun parlor that Thurley once planned and the big living room (right across the front of the house, Danny boy, and a fireplace big enough for two Santa Clauses); Lorraine would revel in the garden pergola and plan the sun dial—oh, it hurt, it hurt—she was a miserable, jealous coward!

How dared Lorraine take her Dan, pale-faced, scheming little creature willing to be a doormat for some one who did not love her! As Thurley entered the elevator, the thought stimulated her in dangerous fashion.... Even yet, if she were to return to Birge’s Corners and say to Dan, “I am sorry—love me, darling,” he would fling discretion and Lorraine to the winds and all would be as it once had been.... Well, she might do it ... after she was famous ... it would have twice the sting and double the triumph.... He would have had time to regret.... She did not love Dan as dearly as she loved love itself, he being the ardent agent of the great force. She wondered if she could love fame as much. She had a flash of realization of what a broken heart such as Miss Clergy’s must have been. Miss Clergy had no talent. Love had been her all.

Hobart was playing a new song as she came into the room. He did not pause to greet her but said, after a moment, looking into a mirror over the piano in which he could see her quite distinctly, “What is wrong? Only a tight slipper? Take off that ridiculous bonnet and come here! I want you to try this—” It was such a jarring contrast, with that wonderful element of sustained and hidden force which such men as Hobart need in order to conquer genius, that Thurley felt the past, of Birge’s Corners and its petty woes and happenings, fade as if some one had painted it out with a mighty brush.

She came to stand beside him, while he taught her the song, making no comment when she finished but turning to a book of prosaic scales.

“Please answer some questions,” Thurley demanded, putting her hand on his arm.

“This is lesson time!” He adjusted a pair of reading glasses critically.

“Let me miss a lesson. I never see you other times and I’ve the right to ask questions.”

With an amused smile he flipped at the keys. “Shoot away,” he sighed.

“What do you think of me?” she began promptly.

“I never tell women what I think of them. Please let’s get to work.”

“Tell me this—am I a real genius?” unconscious of the implied egotism.

“Of course,” he answered simply. “Would I bother so much with you if you were not? Would I send a regiment of teachers and coaches to get you into proper form? But enough of that! Only don’t let it spoil you. Still I don’t think it will, because you’ve the sort of talent that is rock-bottom foundation. You’re going to be immeasurably silly and have all kinds of notions and adventures. I’m not interested in that part of your career. I want you to be clear on this point.” As he spoke, he seemed aloof, absolutely impersonal and removed from workaday affairs, and Thurley experienced the sensation of embarrassment at having asked him any questions.

“Your voice is my hobby just now.” The enthusiasm of youth was in his own. “It is God-given, art concealing art. You have that fire, dash, touch of strangeness that one sees very seldom. You really would have hard work to spoil your voice, Thurley. Moreover, I would have hard work to teach you how to sing. Are you surprised? Oh, you thought as do so many that I would teach you to sing as one learns to dance or paint on china, some systematic, mechanical accomplishment ... all wrong!” He brushed the entire range of keys with his hands as if to express denial of the fact. “God taught you to sing, Thurley. You sang as well in your Birge’s Corners as you will sing in opera—and perhaps better. But you need polish, general education along many lines, endless drill and routine. As for singing, per se, there is nothing I can teach or tell you. I can direct and restrain—that is my part. So it is with all great artists, the gift is quite complete and quite their own; it is for them to be willing to be directed and not to shirk drudgery.” He was about to add something else, something which it seemed to Thurley was a secret of his very heart, but he broke off abruptly with,

“Now, you young country scamp, sing hey and sing ho, for you’re wasting time!” So taking her cue, Thurley fell to work with a zest.

The lesson ended with a surprise.

“Try this aria of Rosina’s in ‘Barber of Seville’—the ‘Una voce poco fa.’ I’ve a notion you can make it celestial harmony if you like. If you can’t do the Italian, take a syllable and stick to it. Now—” Handing her the music he dashed into the aria in contagious spirit.

“Very bad,” he commented, making a wry face and taking the music from her, “but that’s nothing against the voice. A year from now we shall have the music critics sitting up and exclaiming. Run along, Thurley, and don’t let the rustic swains make you lose time from your lessons.”

She was putting on her hat and fancied he could not see her expression. But he surprised her with,

“You will have all the time in the world for nonsense after you’ve mastered the things you need to know. What you want to do is to put your heart in cold storage for a while, as you did your sense of humor. Just be an amiable and obedient genius-flapper and everything else will true up and appear in due season, just as the curtain speeches during the last act reveal the missing will, the lost child and soften the irate parent’s heart against the poor but proud hero.”

“But I don’t want always to have some part of me in cold storage,” Thurley protested. “I’ve always been such—such a very real person that it’s hard to—”

“Of course, that’s the best part of it. Easy things never get you anywhere. Effective medicine is almost always bitter.” He came to put his hands on her shoulders.

“Why, you’re not so old,” she said bluntly, “are you?”

“Not half so old as I’d like to be; age is so safe, Thurley, when you are dealing in temperament! You can growl much more effectively.”

“You mean people fall in love with you?” she asked spiritedly. “Is that what you shrink from?” Her naÏve impertinence was unconscious.

“I cringe! Which is worse than mere shrinking.” He gave her a little shake. “You funny, round-cheeked girl, run along. You’ll be in opera before we realize it and adopting the airs and graces of an empress. But I shall remember you as the direct, rosy-cheeked young person who demanded if I feared having people love me.” His eyes closed briefly and then he whirled her around as if she were a small boy. “Be off! Ah, yes, here’s a note—I nearly did forget.” He reached in an inner pocket and handed over a cream-colored envelope with a heavy lavender seal.

“From her who you fancied was my wife,” he explained, enjoying her confusion. “Ernestine Christian, one of our ‘family.’ She does not start her season until January, but then she’s going to tell you all that. You’ll have to drive fast to be on time, for you’re to take tea with her at half after four. And don’t forget two things: First, you sang the aria in five-and-ten-cent style; and, secondly, you’re a nice apple-cheeked kiddie and deserve splendid things!” He waved her out jocularly, and she found herself going through the anterooms reading the note and not speaking to the secretary.

All it said was:

Thurley Precore—

Come take tea with me at half-past four. Bliss says we are to know each other.

Ernestine Christian.