"He told me you an' him was right good friends."
Already Joe took on a new importance in his sister's eyes. He must be quite a man, she thought, to be the friend of such a person as Miss Sterling.
"So you think you want to go on the stage, do you?"
"Yes, 'm, I thought it might be right nice for me if I could."
"Joe, go out and get some beer for us, and then I 'll hear your sister sing."
Miss Sterling talked as if she were a manager and had only to snap her fingers to be obeyed. When Joe came back with the beer, Kitty drank a glass. She did not like it, but she would not offend her hostess. After this she sang, and Miss Sterling applauded her generously, although the young girl's nervousness kept her from doing her best. The encouragement helped her, and she did better as she became more at home.
"Why, child, you 've got a good voice. And, Joe, you 've been keeping her shut up all this time. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."
The young man had little to say. He had brought Kitty almost under a protest, because he had no confidence in her ability and thought that his "girl" would disillusion her. It did not please him now to find his sister so fully under the limelight and himself "up stage."
Kitty was quite in a flutter of delight; not so much with the idea of working as with the glamour of the work she might be allowed to do.
"I tell you, now," Hattie Sterling pursued, throwing a brightly stockinged foot upon a chair, "your voice is too good for the chorus. Gi' me a cigarette, Joe. Have one, Kitty?--I 'm goin' to call you Kitty. It 's nice and homelike, and then we 've got to be great chums, you know."