She sat by the window and sang, and as she sang the children on the green outside clustered under the elms in little groups to listen to the delicious voice, for she sang carelessly glad, like a thrush alone in a leafy bower. Clear resonant notes pouring from a pillared throat magnificently strung for its work and behind it a passionate vitality that sent the crystal stream welling from the hidden springs of the heart.
Should he upbraid
I’ll own that he prevail,
And sing as sweetly as the nightingale.
Say that he frown, I’ll say his looks I view
As morning roses newly dipped in dew.
She trilled and rippled, and put her head aside to see the hat she was trimming with flowers, and paused to consider, and trilled again, and looped the chain of notes in the purest soprano half unconsciously, more occupied with the hat than with the song, and stopped—the hat became engrossing. A little head appeared at the window.
“Do it again, lady. ’Tis so pretty!”
Even that audience was not despicable. She put the hat down, leaned her bare arms on the sill and put her heart into the singing. The woman in the next house thrust a sour face out at the window.
“You run along to your play, you brats! Wasting time listening to the like of that!” Then, as they helter-skeltered off, to herself: “That Mrs. Hart; any one to look at her can see what she is!”—and flung the window to. The song stopped abruptly. She turned in a fury as if to fling back defiance, then stopped, flushing scarlet, and stood stiff in the middle of the floor; the hat at her feet, the day spoilt for good and all.