id: "Why aren't YOU satisfied, Mrs. Brindley?"

"But I am satisfied," protested Cyrilla. "Only it makes me afraid to
see YOU so well satisfied. I've seen that often in people first
starting, and it's always dangerous. You see, my dear, you've got a
straight-away hundred miles to walk. Can't you see that it would be
possible for you to become too much elated by the way you walked the
first part of the first mile?"

"Why do you try to discourage me?" said Mildred.

Mrs. Brindley colored. "I do it because I want to save you from
despair a little later," said she. "But that is foolish of me. I
shall only irritate you against me. I'll not do it again. And please
don't ask my opinion. If you do, I can't help showing exactly what I
think."

"Then you don't think I've done well?" cried Mildred.

"Indeed you have," replied Cyrilla warmly.

"Then I don't understand. What DO you mean?"

"I'll tell you, and then I'll stop and you must not ask my opinion
again. We live too close together to be able to afford to criticize
each other. What I meant was this: You have done well the first part
of the great task that's before you. If you had done it any less well,
it would have been folly for you to go on."

"That is, what I've done doesn't amount to anything? Mr. Jennings
doesn't agree with you."

"Doubtless he's right," said Mrs. Brindley. "At any rate, we all agree
that you have shown that you have a voice."

She said this so simply and heartily that Mildred could not but be
mollified. Mrs. Brindley changed the subject to the song Mildred had
sung, and Mildred stopped puzzling over the mystery of what she had
meant by her apparently enthusiastic words, which had yet diffused a
chill atmosphere of doubt.

She was doing her scales so well that she became impatient of such
"tiresome child's play." And presently Jennings gave her songs, and
did not discourage her when she talked of roles, of getting seriously
at what, after all, she intended to do. Then there came a week of vile
weather, and Mildred caught a cold. She neglected it. Her voice left
her. Her tonsils swelled. She had a bad attack of ulcerated sore
throat. For nearly three weeks she could not take a single one of the
lessons, which were, nevertheless, paid for. Jennings rebuked her
sharply.

"A singer has no right to be sick," said he.

"You have a cold yourself," retorted she.

"But I am not a singer. I've nothing that interferes wi