"Won't Ma be pleased!" remarked May, with great satisfaction, as they drove along the Parade. "I shan't mind a bit her being vexed that Flossie wasn't asked. Really, Sarah, I never saw Aunt George so excited before. She's generally so die-away and all that."
But Sarah was hardly listening, and not heeding at all. With her precious Amati on her knee, she was looking away over the moonlit sea, thinking of what her aunt had said to her. "If you go on--if you work--your violin will be your fortune. You will be a great woman."
"I will go on; I will work," she said to herself. "If I can be a great woman, I will."
CHAPTER XIII
THE TURNING POINT OF HER LIFE
Mrs. George's opinion of Sarah's violin-playing proved to be the turning point of her life as a violin-player. A few days later, when Mr. and Mrs. Stubbs had returned from Dieppe, she gave a large afternoon reception, to which Sarah took her violin, and played--her best. And the visitors--elegant ladies and gentlemen--crowded round the child, and would have turned her head with praises, had it not been such a sensible little head that they had no sort of effect upon it.
"They talked such a lot," she said to her aunt afterwards, "that I felt frightened at first; but I found that they didn't really know much about it, for one of my strings got flat, and they praised that more than anything."
But her aunt, Mrs. Stubbs, was proud enough and elated enough for a dozen violin-players, and she stood beside Sarah, explaining who she was and how she was going to have lessons from the best master they could get, until Mrs. George felt sick to think that her grand friends should know "that dreadful woman" was a relation of hers.
"Sarah, my dear, Lady Golladay wishes you to play again. Something pathetic."
So Sarah tuned up again, and Mrs. Stubbs was silent.