She began to teach herself Italian with the aid of several grammars, text books, dictionaries, and Mr Wooster.
[p 74]
]She practised the most uninteresting vocal exercises with unwearied patience, and her perpetual singing of scales made Peggie take to a permanently closed kitchen door and remark in confidence to baby that his crying was music to it.
All this because Mr Wooster, musical critic and composer, had told her that if her voice was carefully cultivated and lost none of its wonderful purity and freshness in the process, he did not know any singer in Australia she would not surpass, that her fame would be equal in time to Melba’s or any of the first singers of the day.
She did not tell Larrie this new wonderful secret that made her heart sing even when her lips were silent. She wanted to keep it as a grand surprise to him, and in bursting out on an astonished world to amaze him also, and fill him with pride and gladness at her power. He was so used to her voice, had heard her chirping, and chirruping, and trilling ever since she was five, and though of course he loved it as he loved her, it had [p 75] ]not occurred to him that she was extraordinarily gifted.
Naturally he had heard praise and admiration and considered them only her due, but she had lived so quietly in this lonely Red Road country, both before and after her marriage, that she had never had the opportunity of hearing really competent criticism before. Even she herself had not dreamed her gift was so rich.
Fond of singing she had always been, it came as naturally to her as speech; she knew she had the best voice in the district, but that was not saying much; and sometimes when she had been to concerts in Sydney it had struck her that she could render certain songs of the performers quite as well as they did, if not better.
Mr Wooster’s words had been as a flash of lightning illuminating all her future life. What dreams she had over the piano as she climbed to clear B’s and wonderful birdlike upper C’s! How proud Larrie would be of her, what fame should be hers, how they [p 76] ]would travel with the wealth to come, and oh, what a brilliant, beautiful future baby’s should be!
She told Wooster that she wanted to keep the secret from her husband at present, and he smilingly acquiesced, so great was her happiness in it. In asking Larrie’s permission to give a few lessons to his wife he only said, as twenty others had done before, that her voice was very good indeed and would be much improved by training.
Larrie gave his consent half unwillingly; Dot’s singing he considered was quite good enough for anything, he was quite satisfied; but he saw it would seem churlish to refuse, and Dot would take it as a fresh instance of his ‘tyranny,’ so he allowed the lessons to begin.
He was not half so happy as Dot in those days. Poor Larrie!