d tenor. He must have known that my voice was nothing,
really, but he buoyed me up. I suppose they're all like that. It's
business.

"When the money was two thirds spent I dared not go on, and I asked
him to find me something to do. He'd often said he would when the
right time came. Apparently it hadn't come. He made the excuse that I
ought to have stayed with him longer. It would hurt his reputation to
launch a pupil too soon. So I had to try to launch myself. And it
didn't work. One manager of opera companies on whom I forced myself
tested my voice and said it wasn't strong enough--only a twilight
voice for a drawing-room, he called it. I was broken up--just at
first."

"Poor child!" Peter muttered, but the girl's quick ears caught the
words over the roar of that "ill wind" which had brought them
together.

"Child is my surname, and it's not polite to call me by it." She
brought him to his bearings by suddenly "frivolling" again. "They call
militant suffragettes and housemaids sent to prison for stealing their
kind mistresses' jewels by their surnames. I'm not a militant; and
I've not been a housemaid yet, though I may be, if New York isn't
kinder to me than London."

"I hope it will be--kind in just the right way!"

"My friend who gave me the two letters of introduction says it will:
that Americans _love_ English girls, if they have the courage to come
over. She says there are heaps more chances as well as heaps more room
for us in that country than there are at home."

"That's true, but---"

"Please don't discourage me!"

"Not on your life! Only---"

"'Only' is as bad a word as 'but.' I've got a letter of introduction
to the editor of a New York paper, _To-day and To-morrow_, and one to
the organist of a Higher Thought church. Maud Ellis says they're both
splendid men and interested in women's progress. Something good ought
to come from one or the other. Getting this chance of my passage free
seems a happy omen, as if I were _meant_ to take this great adventure.
I'm not one bit afraid. I feel boiling with courage--except when the
ship pitches and rolls at the same time."

"That's right. You're bound to make good, of course. I wouldn't
discourage you for the world. All I meant to say was that I'd like you
to think of me as a friend. I don't want to lose sight of you when we
land. I might be able to help in some way or other or--my family
might. Before we get off the ship I'll introduce you and my sister