The little wren tossed her hands and shoulders, laughing lightly. “The story ends there! I have gotten you to speak! Come—let us see what you have brought. I hope a variety, for I like to choose!” She ran her fingers lightly through the music-roll, pulling out “The Messiah,” to Joy’s horror. She had not dreamed that the heroine of thirty operas, and mistress of the concert stage, would even glance at oratorio.
“Behold what is complete in one,” she was saying. “We have everything here, from the dramatics to the dynamics. Come, let us be off!”
“I didn’t suppose—this is the hardest thing I ever tried to do—” Joy faltered, following her to the piano.
“No matter! You have saved yourself already, in saying ‘tried to do,’ instead of—‘done’!” She modulated into the pastoral symphony, still talking: “This is so cruel! Nearly eighty pages while the soprano sits like a rock! Many have no voice left when their time comes!”
She played for Joy to sing through the four first recitatives, then without comment plunged into the “Come Unto Him,” followed by “Rejoice Greatly,” and ending with “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth.”
Then she turned on the bench. “We all have fads, which we call convictions,” she said quietly; “and mine is that this music we have just done can show plainly as nothing else, what one has and what one has learned. Now let us have some fun and do some op-era. What can you do?”
“Pa hasn’t given me anything but Faust——”
“He wouldn’t; I am glad; for I know you have other airs, and I shall wish to see what you have done without Pa, with your own brain and soul-fire. Come, shall we do something so banal you shall have to lend it your own self, lest we remember the hurdy-gurdy?”
Joy hesitated, as she had been about to suggest her beloved Louise.
“But-terfly!” cried the little wren, and tore a wail of beauty from the keys.