IX
It was after the Christmas holidays, which Joy had worked through with no let-up save Christmas day at home with her father, that Pa announced a change in schedule.
“You are working too steadily,” he said. “You never do anything else; you will turn into a machine; then you will no longer be a girl, and the warmth and glory of your appeal will be gone. Like that! Moreover, it takes a fine shade of quality from your voice; I want you to use it as an instrument, of course, but I think too much of how hard you have worked, and how dull your skin and eyes are getting, when I hear you.”
“Do you really think I’m losing my quality?” Joy demanded.
He laughed. “There—do you see what you just said? That shows you are turning into a little tuning fork, my dear. A girl would have cried: ‘Are my skin and eyes really dull?’ or at least looked in the mirror in front of you.” Before her attitude of unrelaxed question, he grew serious. “No, your quality is not as yet impaired in the slightest; and you are soaring along so swiftly that I cannot believe you have been with me for so few months. But a good teacher can see a fault pending before it takes possession; and as I have so often remarked, I am a good teacher. You need a change.”
“Are you going to send me home for a rest?” she asked in swift antagonism.
“No. You are going to New York. Take some friends along with you if you wish; stay at the Belmont, where all the nice Bostonians stay when they deign to turn their faces westward; go to the opera; go shopping; in short, have not a rest, but a vacation.”
“New York!” she breathed. “Oh, Pa—do you really mean it?”
He nodded. “And I want you to sing for my baby.” He mentioned a name that was a household word for glory of song, a name that shone high and clear in the eminence where only the truly great stars remain, while others tremble for a day and then are gone.
“Sing—for—her!” Joy gasped. “Oh, Pa, I couldn’t—not yet!”