* * * * * * * *
Greta had not slept long before she found herself once more wide awake, staring up at the fleeing clouds. “Something must have disturbed my dreams,” she murmured. “What can it have been?”
Then, as minds have a way of doing, her mind took up an old, old problem and thought it all through again. This problem had to do with her future. A very rich woman had heard her playing the violin in a very small concert. She had, as she had expressed it, been “charmed, charmed indeed,” by Greta’s modest efforts. She had offered to become her good angel, had this very rich and rather pompous lady. “You shall study at my expense, under the very great masters,” she had said. “No expense shall be spared. And in time—” her bulging eyes had glowed. “In time you shall have the world at your feet!”
Greta had not said “I will do it.” Instead, she had replied, “I must talk it over with my mother. I will see.”
She was still “seeing.” This was one of the problems yet to be solved. She did long to study under great masters. And yet, she loved her own family. She wished that they might do for her all that was grand and glorious. “To invite a rich stranger into one’s life,” some wise person had said to her, “is often to shut one’s humble friends out.”
“The world at my feet,” she repeated, then laughed softly to herself. Beneath them, rolling away like billows of the sea, was the glorious green of that primeval forest; and beyond that, black and mysterious in the night, lay the waters of Lake Huron.
“The world at my feet! I have that tonight!” she murmured. “I—”
She sat straight up to listen. The wind had changed. It was rising. The right side of their tent was sagging. Borne in on this wind, the sound that had puzzled her before came sweeping in like the notes of some long forgotten song.
“Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana!” Her astonishment knew no bounds. Surely there was someone on Greenstone Ridge! Someone who played the violin divinely.
“And yet,” she thought more soberly, “in this still air sound carries far. May be on some boat out there on the black waters.”