She didn’t want anything else. She couldn’t and wouldn’t be bothered with “social duties.” She wanted to work hard, all day and every day, until she was mistress of this great gift of hers, until she could sing in reality as she did in imagination. She had fits of black depression, when the sounds that came from her throat seemed a mockery of what she intended. At other moments she was in wild spirits, because she was sure she had made a little progress.
Her changing humors were so marked that Aunt Amy was gravely perturbed. She felt that Ethel was becoming “eccentric,” which was the worst thing any one could be, and she attributed it all to this annoying obsession with singing. In all good faith, she did what she thought best for the girl—she stopped her lessons.
Ethel wept and stormed and entreated and argued until she was almost ill, but without moving Aunt Amy.
“No!” that lady said firmly. “If you’ll put all that nonsense out of your head, and lead a normal, sensible life like other girls, I’ll let you take up singing again in a year.”
She hoped and believed that within a year’s time such a pretty and delightful girl would surely find something better to think about.
Ethel was helpless. She was exquisitely dressed, and she lived in great comfort and luxury, but she hadn’t a penny of her own to pay for lessons.
Artists, however—even young and undeveloped ones—are very hard to deal with, because they will not give up and be sensible. Instead of resigning herself to doing without what she wanted, Ethel did nothing but think how she could get at least a part of it. Being nineteen, and rash, and terribly in earnest, she was dallying with a singularly unsuitable idea.
III
“Hello, Lad!” she said, not at all surprised, and apparently not very much pleased, at the sudden appearance of a young man on that quiet path through the woods.
“Hello, Ethel!” he returned, and fell into step beside her.