“He does not!” retorted Drusilla, “he doesn’t know I’m up here. But he hasn’t been the same since he sold his claim, and I want to buy it back. He sold it to get the money to send me to New York, and it was all an awful mistake. I can never become a great singer.”
“No?” inquired Denver, glad to change the subject, “I thought you were doing fine. That evening when you─”
“Well, so did I!” she broke in, “until you played all those records; and then it came over me I couldn’t sing like that if I tried a thousand years. I just haven’t got the temperament. Those continental people have something that we lack–they’re so Frenchy, so emotional, so full of fire! I’ve tried and I’ve tried and I just can’t do it–I just can’t interpret those parts!”
She stamped her foot and winked very fast and Denver forgot he was a stranger. He had heard 104her sing so often that he seemed to know her well, to have known her for years and years, and he ventured a comforting word.
“Oh well, you’re young yet,” he suggested shame-facedly, “perhaps it will come to you later.”
“No, it won’t!” she flared back, “I’ve got to give it up and go to teaching school!”
She stomped her foot more impatiently than ever and Denver went to cracking rocks.
“What do you think of that?” he inquired casually, handing over a chunk of ore; but she gazed at it uncomprehendingly.
“Isn’t there anything I can do?” she began at last, “that will make you change your mind? I might give you this much money now and then pay you more later, when I go to teaching school.”
“Well, what do you want it back for?” he demanded irritably, “it’s been lying here idle for years. I’d think you’d be glad to have somebody get hold of it that would do a little work.”