t it and patting a pile of
music, "I want our friends to hear 'The Toreador.'"

The Cashier looked up protestingly. "You are the one they want to hear,
dear," he declared.

She shook her head. "They've heard me often, but never you, I think.
Besides, it wakes the babies, you know, for me to sing."

"You don't need to sing high notes, Azalea," I urged. "I'd like nothing
so well as the lullaby you sang to the babies."

But she shook her head again. "That's their song," she said. "You were
specially privileged to hear it at all. But I can't do it for company.
Come, Arthur--please."

So the Cashier sang. The Philosopher and I found it necessary to avoid
each other's eyes as he did it. The Cashier could roar 'The Toreador,'
no doubt of that. The voice of the bull of Bashan would have been as the
summer wind in the trees beside it. Where so much volume came from we
could not tell, as we looked at the thin frame of the performer. Why the
babies did not wake up will ever remain a mystery. Why Azalea did not
desert her accompaniment to press her hands over bursting ear drums I
cannot imagine, for it was with difficulty that I surrendered my own to
the shock. But Azalea played on to the end, and looked up into the
Cashier's flushed face at the last note with a smile of proprietary
triumph. Then she turned about to us.

"That fairly takes me off my feet!" cried the Philosopher. I groped
hurriedly for a compliment which would match the equivocal fervour of
this, but I could not equal it.

"How much you must enjoy singing together," I said, "when the babies are
awake,"--and felt annoyed that I could have said it, for I could really
not imagine the two voices together.

Azalea glowed. The Cashier grinned. He is as quick-witted as he is
good-humoured. "You're a clever pair," he chuckled.

"I've trained him myself," said Azalea. "When I knew him first he'd
never thought of singing. I only discovered his voice by accident. It
needs much more work with it, of course, but it's powerful, and it has a
quality that will improve with cultivation."

The Cashier patted her shoulders. "Now you sing some soft little thing
for them, my girl," he commanded--and looking up at him again, Azalea
obeyed. She chose an old ballad, one with no chance in it to show the
range of her voice. She sang it exquisitely, and the Cashier stood by
and turned her music as if he considered it a high privilege. Yet,
half-way through, the little Dot woke up.