Emilia, "He carried my harp evening
after evening, and would not even take sixpence for the trouble."

"Are you really going to sing there?"

"Didn't you hear? I promised."

"To-night?"

"Yes; certainly."

"Do you know what it is you have promised?"

"To sing."

Adela glided to her sisters near at hand, and these ladies presently
hemmed Emilia in. They had a method of treating matters they did not
countenance, as if nature had never conceived them, and such were the
monstrous issue of diseased imaginations. It was hard for Emilia to hear
that what she designed to do was "utterly out of the question and not
to be for one moment thought of." She reiterated, with the same
interpreting stress, that she had given her promise.

"Do you know, I praised you for putting them off so cleverly," said
Adela in tones of gentle reproach that bewildered Emilia.

"Must we remind you, then, that you are bound by a previous promise?"
Cornelia made a counter-demonstration with the word. "Have you not
promised to dine with us at Lady Gosstre's to-night?"

"Oh, of course I shall keep that," replied Emilia. "I intend to. I will
sing there, and then I will go and sing to those poor people, who never
hear anything but dreadful music--not music at all, but something that
seems to tear your flesh!"

"Never mind our flesh," said Adela pettishly: melodiously remonstrating
the next instant: "I really thought you could not be in earnest."

"But," said Arabella, "can you find pleasure in wasting your voice and
really great capabilities on such people?"

Emilia caught her up--"This poor man? But he loves music: he really
knows the good from the bad. He never looks proud but when I sing to
him."

The situation was one that Cornelia particularly enjoyed. Here was a low
form of intellect to be instructed as to the precise meaning of a
word, the nature of a pledge. "There can be no harm that I see, in your
singing to this man," she commenced. "You can bid him come to one of the
out-houses here, if you desire, and sing to him. In the evening, after
his labour, will be the fit time. But, as your friends, we cannot permit
you to demean yourself by going from our house to a public booth, where
vulgar men are smoking and drinking beer. I wonder you have the courage
to contemplate such an act! You have pledged your word. But if you had
pledged your word, child, to swing upon that tree, suspended by your
arms, for an hour, could you keep it? I