“’Oo are you gettin’ at?” she asked.
“I’m getting at you, getting at you with the best voice-producing system in the North of England—Walter Pate’s. And when I’ve finished with you, you’ll be—well, you won’t be singing in the street.”
“Well, I can’t see it, Walter,” said Tom.
“You’ve the wrong letters after your name to see it,” said Walter, “but I’ve made a find to-night, and I’m gambling two years’ hard work on the find’s being something that will make the musical world sit up. Buy a cheap brooch and it’s tin washed with gold. That voice is the other way round. It’s tin on top and gold beneath and I’m going digging for the gold.” Not, he might have added, because gold has value in the market. If Walter Pate had discovered a voice which, under training, was to become the pride of Staithley, that was all he wanted; he wouldn’t hide under a bushel his light as the discoverer and the instructor, but all he wanted else was proof in support of his often expressed opinion that musically Staithley led Lancashire (the rest of the world didn’t matter) and he thought he had found his proof in—he turned to the girl. “You haven’t told us your name,” he said.
“Mary Ellen Bradshaw,” she told him, and “Lord!” said Tom. “You’ll waste your time.”
“I shan’t,” said Walter. “There’s grit amongst that tribe. You’re here to prove it.”
“Where do you live?” Tom asked her.
“Brick-yards, mostly,” she said. “I’m good at dodging bobbies.” There is warm sleeping by the kilns, and the police know it.
“Got any parents, Mary Ellen?”
“’A dunno. They was there last time ’A went to Jackman’s Buildings. There weren’t no baggin’ there, so ’a ’opped it. That’s a long time sin’.”