“I am talking of Miss Grey’s voice,” Miss Percy said. “I told her there is a fortune in it.”
“But not for the stage. Louie on the stage, with footlights and green rooms and powder and paint, and all sorts of people! I should not like it. Ugh!” and Herbert gave a whistle indicative of his opinion of all sorts of people with powder and paint and footlights. “Would you like to see her there?” he continued, turning to Fred, who answered:
“I can scarcely imagine it, although I believe she might be a second Patti.”
“But she won’t—she shan’t! I could never respect a girl who sang on the stage,” Herbert rejoined, with so much spirit that Louie burst into a merry laugh and said:
“What are you so excited about? I am not on the stage and never shall be. I am here on the veranda, and awfully hot and thirsty. I wish you would bring me some water.”
Both Herbert and Fred started for the water, but Herbert was first, and Fred returned to Louie and told her what a wonderful voice she had, and that it ought to be cultivated to the utmost, while Miss Percy said she could undoubtedly make a great success as a public singer, if circumstances required.
“Oh, don’t,” Louie answered, closing her eyes wearily. “I have a presentiment that I may have to sing, and sometimes feel as if I were living in the future instead of thousands of years ago, as some say we did, and that I am before the footlights—real footlights—and there are seas of faces looking at me and thunders of applause, and I hate it all, but must do it for something, or some one. I wonder who it is?”
She seemed to be talking to herself rather than to Miss Percy and Fred, both of whom looked curiously at her, while Fred suggested:
“Doing it for fame, perhaps.”
Louie shook her head. “Never for that. Only duty, or love for some one, could make me do in reality what I have so often done in fancy.”