‘I have not yet the pleasure of your name,’ said Mrs. Lochleven Cameron, addressing Barbara.
‘My name is Barbara Allen,’ said Barbara, speaking it unconsciously as though it were a line of an old ballad.
‘This, Miss Allen,’ said Mrs. Cameron with a sweep of the right hand which might have served to introduce a landscape, ‘is Mr. Lochleven Cameron.’
Barbara rose and curtsied, and Mr. Lochleven Cameron bowed. Barbara concluded that this was not the gentleman who had been called downstairs as ‘Joe.’
‘Will you’ sing that little ballad over again, Miss Allen?’ asked Mrs. Cameron, gravely seating herself.
Barbara sang the ballad over again, and sang it rather better than before.
Mrs. Cameron cried again, and Mr. Cameron said ‘Bravo!’ at the finish.
‘Now,’ said Mrs. Cameron, ‘do you know anything sprightly?’ she pronounced it ‘sproightly,’ but she was off her guard.
Barbara, by this time only enough excited to do her best, sang ‘Come lasses and lads,’ and sang it like herself, with honest mirth and rural roguishness. For without knowing it, this young lady was a born actress, and did by nature and beautifully what others are taught to do awkwardly.
‘You’ll have to broaden the style a little for the theatre,’ said the tragédienne, ‘but for a small room nothing could be better.’