“Fifteen. I—I understood you to say you were ten years old when you left it.”
“So I was. I am twenty-five now.”
So much as that! So much older than any of us! I could hardly believe it.
“I should not have taken you for more than seventeen, Miss Carey.”
“At seventeen I went out to earn my own living,” she said, in a sad tone, but with a candour that I liked. “That is eight years ago.”
Helen’s music ceased with a crash. Miss Deveen came up to Janet Carey.
“My dear, I hear you can sing: your aunt tells me so. Will you sing a song, to please me?”
She was like a startled fawn: looking here, looking there, and turning white and red. But she rose at once.
“I will sing if you wish it, madam. But my singing is only plain singing: just a few old songs. I have never learnt to sing.”
“The old songs are the best,” said Miss Deveen. “Can you sing that sweet song of all songs—‘Blow, blow, thou wintry wind’?”