“I can’t do anything but play the piano. Mamma taught me that, but I can play better than she does, though we have no piano now.”
“Do you sing, then?”
“No, I can’t sing”—her voice sounded more mournful than at any time before, almost despairing—“I can’t sing at all now.”
“Probably your voice is changing; you’ll have plenty of voice if you’ve had it before.”
“Oh, yes,” she replied impatiently; “it isn’t the voice I’m thinking of, but I can never sing any more.”
She raised her head slowly and regarded us all with a swift, deep, strangely searching look.
“What do you do that for?” we asked. “What are you looking for?”
“I’m looking at your eyes.” Her voice was childish, naïvely frank and so earnest!
“Do you often do so?”
“Yes, among strangers; then I don’t look at them any more.”