There was really nothing in the world that Katy would not have liked to do, except to stay in Millerstown and be inconspicuous; there was nothing in the world which she questioned her ultimate ability to do.
The doctor chuckled at Katy's comparison, which Katy had not intended to be funny.
"A classmate of mine is coming to see me next week. He teaches singing, and I'm going to get him to hear your voice. Won't that be fine, Katy?"
"Everything is fine," answered Katy.
The doctor's classmate arrived; for him Katy oh'd and ah'd through an astonishingly wide range. The young man was enthusiastic over her vocal possibilities.
"But he says you mustn't take lessons for another year," said Dr. Benner.
Again he and Katy were driving down the mountain road. They had climbed this afternoon to the Sheep Stable, and from there had gazed at the glorious prospect and had counted through a glass the scattered villages and the church spires in the county seat.
Katy's blood tingled in her veins. She had never dreamed that she could sing! She had never seen a picture which was painted by hand or she would now have been certain that she could become a great artist. She determined that some day she would return to the Sheep Stable alone and there sing for her own satisfaction. She had not sung her best for the doctor's friend down in grandmother's parlor, her best meaning her loudest. At the Sheep Stable there would be no walls to confine the great sounds she would produce.
"I will sing so that they hear me at Allentown," she planned. "I have no time now, but when I have time I will go once. It is so nice not to be dumb," finished Katy with great satisfaction.
The winter passed like a dream. Presently an interesting change came about in the Millerstown school and in its teacher. Perhaps Mr. Carpenter was mortified, as well as driven into it, but there sprang up somehow in his soul a decent, honest ambition. Delving painfully after forgotten knowledge, he studied to some purpose, and it began to seem as though even civil service questions might become easy and Mr. Carpenter pass his examinations at last. For the first few weeks of the new régime, he was able to keep only a lesson or two ahead of his pupils, but, little by little, that space widened. As if in pure spite, Mr. Carpenter learned his lessons. Then he assumed a superior and taunting air. Katy at the Christmas entertainment had looked at him with no more disgust than his face now expressed when his pupils gave wrong answers.