She received her answer via wire the night she returned to New York unwillingly to sing her first concert.
“Not a gray angel but white. Wait until I can say not write it.
“B. H.”
All New York whispered that “the Precore voice” was more ravishing than ever, particularly when it sang love songs!
While Thurley bustled about between her season and her remodelling of the lake colony and assembling her new family, the original family underwent some thrilling events.
Hobart was taken unawares with a fresh budget of duties which kept him West without respite, although he went so far as to send Thurley numerous flowergrams and offer donations towards her Fincherie, writing notes in which he demanded more details as to the work and advice as to her career.
Polly Harris had a mysterious surprise which resolved itself into a great success. It was not the grand opera that Polly stubbornly dreamed of during the lean years of struggle; without warning, she composed and had published camp songs which roused the country to topnotch enthusiasm. They were jingles, really, but with sincere sentiments, a tinge of humor and a vigorous little melody—they sprang from the depths of Polly’s loyal heart, bravely relinquishing opera ambitions because “a song fights as well as an army,” she decided, locking her attic door and preparing to drudge.
“I feel light-headed,” she informed Thurley when she came to the latter’s apartment to tell all about it. “As if I were going to open my eyes to find myself in a dentist’s chair, following the taking of old fashioned laughing gas while I lost a wisdom tooth! That it would be the same ‘’ammer, ’ammer, ’ammer on the broad ’ighway’ for yours truly! Oh, don’t ask how I wrote them—how do you sing or Bliss direct—or Collin paint?” she added softly.
“Come, sit in my lap, Polly,” said Thurley suddenly. “I’ve always wanted to have you, you’re such a featherweight and I’m so huge. I always wanted to capture you and make you hear me out. You don’t know how glad I am for you and what wonderful things are ahead for every one.” She beckoned so enticingly that Polly, the same, unspoiled Polly in brown smock and shabby boots, perched herself on Thurley’s knee while they talked it all out. The Fincherie Colony and Hobart’s precious dreams, the useless, selfish work Caleb was doing, Ernestine’s amusingly complaining letters, Lissa’s lack of success in finding a duke or a blue-blooded patroness, the threat that she might have to cut her hair short if she was really going to stay—what would become of that lazy rascal of a Mark?—and here was Collin giving no one a hint as to what he was doing. And then Polly flushed and she said awkwardly: