The next second, I had her helt clost in my arms, and her pretty haid was agin my breast. Aw, it was like them first days once more. And all the hurt went of a suddent, and the air cleared kinda–as if a storm’d just passed. My little gal!
Pretty soon, (I was settin’ on the organ-stool, and she was standin’ in front of me, me holdin’ her hands) I says, “They is one thing–now that I’ve tole you I was wrong–they is just one thing I’m goin’ to ast you t’ do as a favour. If you do it, things ’ll go smooth with us from now on. It’s this, little gal: Cut out that Doctor Bugs.”
“I know how you don’t like him,” she answers; “and you’re right. ’Cause he shore played you a low-down trick at that Medicine Show. But, Alec, he brings my music-teacher.”
“Wal, honey, what you want the teacher fer?”
She stopped, and up went that pert, little haid. “You recollect what Doctor Simpson said about my voice that night at the social?” she begun. “This teacher says the same thing.”
Like a flash, I recalled what Hairoil ’d tole me. “Mace,” I says, “I want t’ ast you about that. A-course, I know it ain’t so. But Hairoil says you got pictures of actresses and singers tacked up in you’ room–just one ’r two.”
“Yas,” she answers; “that’s straight. What about it?”
“It’s all right, I guess. But the ole son-of-a-gun got the idear, kinda, that you was thinkin’ some of–of the East.”
“Alec,” she says, frank as could be, “yesterday Doctor Simpson got a letter from Noo York. He’d writ a big teacher there, inquirin’ if I had a chanst t’ git into op’ra–grand op’ra–and the teacher says yas.”
I couldn’t answer nothin’. I just sit there, knocked plumb silly, almost, and looked at a big rose in the carpet. Noo York!