"What a pity her grandmamma wouldn't let her take lessons, as I once ventured to suggest!" said Mrs. James. "She has a true ear, and a sweet voice wonderfully like her mother's, which I quite well remember. But Mrs. MacDonald had the idea that music lessons would lead to vanity. Don't you think, sir" (she often slips in a respectful "sir"), "that her voice would repay instruction?"
"I do," pronounced the great Somerled.
"I'm sure you sing," went on Mrs. James. "I flatter myself I can always tell by people's faces."
"Like Barrie, I never had lessons," he said. "But I suppose we Highlanders are born with music in our blood."
"Then you do sing?" she persisted.
"Only to please myself. Not that it does!"
"Will you sing to please us?"
"It wouldn't please you."
"Barrie, you ask."
"The Princess commands!" I said, not expecting him to humour my impudence, but he did, by going at once to the piano. It had lisped and stammered awkwardly for Mrs. James, but it obeyed him as if the keys were mesmerized. He played a prelude, and then sang "Annie Laurie," in a soft, mellow voice, so low that people outside the room could hardly have heard. It seemed as if there must really be an "Annie Laurie" in his life. Surely a man could not sing like that, and look like that in singing, unless he called up the face of some woman he loved. I wondered if he thought of Mrs. West, who is so very pretty, and rather like the description of "Annie Laurie." His eyes looked far away as he sang, through the wall—oh, yes, I'm sure they could see through the wall at that moment—perhaps as far as "Maxwellton Braes"; perhaps still farther, searching for Mrs. West wherever she might be.