“Never mind the work. The work may go. I’ll make it up somehow. Could you manage this, do you think?”
By way of answer, Margaret seated herself and ran over the prelude with tolerable ease, and at the proper time nodded to him to begin.
There was no interruption until the really impressive voice had died away in the last note, and then Margaret dropped her hands on her lap and said, with a long-drawn breath:
“I can see no lack. It is most beautiful. I think you must have greatly under-estimated your voice. It has a quality that touches me deeply.”
“What there is of it does pretty well,” Louis answered, smiling, well pleased at her earnest commendation. “Ames says I’m the best singer to have no voice that he ever heard, which is the greatest amount of praise I can lay claim to.”
“I feel more than ever, now, the lack of cultivation in Mr. Somers’ voice,” said Margaret. “It is really a grand organ, but he scarcely knows how to sing anything with entire correctness, unless it is something in which he has been carefully drilled by some one who knows a little more than himself. I wish he could hear you sing.”
“I wish I could hear him,” said Louis. “If he has the voice, the cultivation can be acquired readily enough; but with me the utmost has been done. Much of this music is rather beyond me. Let us try a ballad.”
He was bending over the rack, in search of some particular piece, when the door-bell sounded. They both heard it, and their eyes met with a look of disappointment.
“It’s too bad,” said Margaret, regretfully. “I don’t want to be interrupted.”
“In that case,” said Louis, promptly, arresting the servant on his way to the door by a quick motion of the hand, “suppose you allow me to have the ladies excused.”