“But what a foolish question!” she said. “As if it wasn’t worth while spending all one’s life to do anything well. Most people can’t! They are incapable of excellence. But, Mr. Hugh, I assure you there are masses of people who adore excellence, only they can’t attain it themselves. Of course there are heaps of foolish and flippant creatures who, as you say, only wonder who is wearing those diamonds, but what do they matter? You don’t mind because the cab-horses in the street don’t know what an artist you are.”
Hugh sighed, and pulled down his upper lip with a ludicrous resemblance to his brother-in-law.
“London is a very wicked place,” he said, “and makes a business of its pleasures, whereas we here in Mannington make a pleasure of our business. Oh, I forgot, it was my sister who said that! Let’s talk about something else. I should like Andrew Robb to know what a difference he has made to me, and how, just because of him, I am going to make a fool of myself at Covent Garden.”
“You haven’t done that yet,” remarked Edith.
“No, but I shall. I told Dick and my sister, by the way, about it, but they rather disapproved. They don’t think that it is a serious career. Dick urged me very strongly to send in my name as a candidate for the Education Department, in addition to taking this engagement. Education Department—me! There is quiet humour about that, don’t you think? The hours, as he pointed out, were only from eleven till five, so that I should have plenty of time to keep up my singing. Also, as he justly observed, I should not be singing more than a couple of nights a week, and that only while Wagner opera was being given. We are going to have a talk about it all this evening. He strongly advises the Education Department, and dissuades me from the opera, but he doesn’t see why they shouldn’t be worked together. Lord, how I jaw about myself! I apologise. Only I am so dreadfully interested in it all this minute. Where’s the cat and the woodshed?”
Edith sat down firmly on a garden bench.
“The woodshed will wait,” she said, “and the cat will fly at you just the same in ten minutes from now. I want to tell you how delighted I am with your decision, and, indeed, that is not wholly selfish on my part, though I anticipate the most enormous pleasure from hearing you sing in opera. But for other reasons also; you see I am Peggy’s sister, and I think we are very much alike in some ways. We both want people to screw the utmost ounce out of themselves, and it seemed to us both that you had masses of ounces that were not being screwed out. You sang to us divinely: you sang that shepherd’s lullaby just as divinely to Daisy——”
“How did you know I sang it?” asked Hugh quickly.
Edith was honest; that was as essential a characteristic of her as was the absence of self-consciousness in Hugh.
“Because I listened,” she said. “Also I spied through the chink of the nursery door. You left it open. I also apologise—no, I don’t. I didn’t do any harm. I’m not ashamed.”