r were too _distrait_,
too absorbed in their own affairs, to pay much attention to Jacqueline.
Whatever confidences trembled on her lips, remained unsaid. She felt
that they had more important things to think about. Once, indeed, she
had ventured to join her voice to that of the Victrola in the mad scene
from "Lucia," acting at the same time her conception of the part; and
her family, staring in amazement, had suddenly roared with laughter, the
first laughter heard in that house for many a day.

So Jacqueline and her hurt dignity sought refuge in the Ruin, there to
rehearse her art hereafter untroubled by the jeers of an untemperamental
world. Her faithful audience and inseparable companion was Mag's baby,
who crowed and gurgled impartially over the woes of _La Tosca_,
_Camille_ or _Manon_, having inherited the easy-going placidity of her
mother. Sometimes Kate, coming and going about her work, paused to
listen, smiling at the arias soaring up out of the ravine, and thought,
"It is a good thing that child has all outdoors at her disposal!
Whatever should I do with her between four walls?"

Here, on the afternoon following her raid upon the raiders, Jacqueline
posed and strutted happily, making the welkin ring with the piteousness
of _Madame Butterfly_. From without came distant, languid, sounds of
late summer, grass-mowers whirring in the hay-meadows, a stallion
nickering in his stall for the freedom of the pasture, crickets and
katydids shrilling their cheerful dirge for the summer that was passing.
All of these sounds the girl knew and savored in the intervals between
her singing. Now and then a bird hopped down from the branches that hung
over the roofless cabin, and searched fearlessly for provender at her
very feet. Mag's baby, on a bed of moss and leaves, crooned to herself,
kicking fat legs toward heaven and clutching at stray sunbeams with
futile hands.

Jacqueline broke off. "Oh, dear, I could sing so much better if somebody
would listen!" she complained aloud to the birds and the baby and the
world at large. "It takes two to make real music, a singer and a
listener."

She began again. Suddenly, just outside, a very passable tenor took up
the air just where a tenor should. Jacqueline was startled but not
nonplussed; she had been hoping a miracle might occur that day. At
seventeen, the age of miracles has not passed. She finished her share of
the duet with a flourish, and on the last note of his, Percival Ch