"Who are you going with?"
The question was asked with some imperiousness.
"With a friend."
"A gentleman friend?"
Defiantly. "I don't think that is anything you need to know."
"Oh, of course it's none of my business, you needn't tell me that. But say, won't you go out first with me? I'll be around at two o'clock and bring you back by five or six. That'll be in time for your little dinner, won't it now?"
"Perhaps so."
She buried herself again in her libretto. "Mr. Brown," she said after a minute. "Listen to what the last scene will be. It's a horrid dungeon, for Manrico and his mother are in prison. As she lies there on her bed she thinks of the mountains where she was born, and that she and her son will go back there together and live in peace. When she sings it, just think about the hills in your own home."
He looked at her in some surprise. "I will," he said, "just the way you say, and about my mother, too. It all seems real to you, don't it?"
"Very real!"