Peace paused for breath, the well of her imagination run dry, but her face was so radiant that instinctively her listener knew these were not idle words, though she could not keep the hard tone out of her voice as she answered, "Ah, that is easy enough to say, but—wait until you are where I am now, and I think you will find it lots harder to practice what you preach. You will turn your face to the wall, say good-bye to those who you thought were your friends, build a high fence around yourself and hide—hide from the world and everything!"
"Oh, no," Peace protested, shuddering at the picture she had drawn. "I should die if I couldn't see the sun and flowers and kind faces of the folks I love. But—it—would be—awfully hard never to walk again."
"Hard? It is torture!" She had forgotten that she was talking to a mere child, one who could not understand what it was to have dearest ambitions thwarted, one who could not even know yet what it was to have ambitions. "I had dreamed of being a great singer some day—"
"Oh, do you sing?" cried Peace, who was passionately fond of music in whatever guise it came.
"Masters said I could—"
"Then please sing for me. I can only whistle, and then folks say,
"'Whistling girls and crowing hens
Always come to some bad ends.'
"I'd like awfully much to hear you sing."
"Oh, I don't sing any more! That is all past now; but oh, how I loved it! We were going to Europe, Aunt Pen and I, and when we came back after months and years of study, I thought I should be a—Jenny Lind, perhaps. I thought of it by day, I dreamed of it by night. It was everything to me. And then—my horse fell—and here I am."
"Was it long ago?" whispered Peace, strangely stirred by the passionate words of the girl before her.