“Your cousin, I suppose!”
Burnett nodded.
“She wanted you,” he said. “She’s taken a fancy to you; and she can afford to marry for love,” he added.
“I’m thankful that I can, too,” the other answered fervently.
His friend laughed at the fervor.
“You make me think of her teacher,” he said. “She sings, and when she was sixteen she meant to outrank Patti; she was lots homelier then.”
“Oh, I say!” Jack cried. “I can believe ’most anything, but—”
Burnett laughed and then sobered.
“She was,” he said solemnly; “she really and truly was. And her mother said to her teacher,—there in Dresden: ‘She will be the greatest soprano, won’t she?’ And he said: ‘Madame, she has only that one chance—to be the greatest.’”
Jack laughed.