One day she decided that it was better to be a wild thing in the lovely marshes, than to have a soul that cried for beautiful things and found not one. From that day she determined to be rid of her soul, so she told her story to one of the factory girls, and said to her:
‘The other girls are poorly clad and they do soulless work; surely some of them have no souls and would take mine.’
But the factory girl said to her: ‘All the poor have souls. It is all they have.’
Then Mary Jane watched the rich whenever she saw them, and vainly sought for some one without a soul.
One day at the hour when the machines rested and the human beings that tended them rested too, the wind being at that time from the direction of the marshlands, the soul of Mary Jane lamented bitterly. Then, as she stood outside the factory gates, the soul irresistibly compelled her to sing, and a wild song came from her lips, hymning the marshlands. And into her song came crying her yearning for home, and for the sound of the shout of the North Wind, masterful and proud, with his lovely lady the Snow; and she sang of tales that the rushes murmured to one another, tales that the teal knew and the watchful heron. And over the crowded streets her song went crying away, the song of waste places and of wild free lands, full of wonder and magic, for she had in her elf-made soul the song of the birds and the roar of the organ in the marshes.
At this moment Signor Thompsoni, the well-known English tenor, happened to go by with a friend. They stopped and listened; everyone stopped and listened.
‘There has been nothing like this in Europe in my time,’ said Signor
Thompsoni.
So a change came into the life of Mary Jane.
People were written to, and finally it was arranged that she should take a leading part in the Covent Garden Opera in a few weeks.
So she went to London to learn.