There was no seesawing of decisions, no teetering from one course to another when she read that letter. Beneath her relief she might feel guilty, but it was the triumphant guilt as of the stout lady who takes chocolate while sighing “I ought not to take this!” She would stay—for a month longer. And then—then she would see! Strangely enough, Packy did not appear for a long time after that first day. He called up promptly, and as Jerry had expressed it, “reneged” on his invitation to the ball game. He had invited a girl, Class Day, and it seems, he explained, that one had to take one’s Class Day girl to the game. “Perhaps it’s just as well, though,” he said, “because when I see you, I want to see you, and not necessarily in a howling mob where I might forget and pound you in the frenzy of the moment. I’d much rather pound my Class Day girl!” When Joy told Jerry, she turned up her snub nose. “I thought he’d give you a rain-check on that. It’s their Commencement game, you see—families thick all round—maybe he got faint at the thought.” “What do you mean?” Joy had demanded. Jerry shrugged her shoulders and took another cigarette. “Merely that never in all my intercollegiate activity, have I been asked to a Commencement, or any affair where all the proud families have come to gaze on their angel sons—and neither has Sal—and he probably thought you followed suit!” Nevertheless, in spite of Packy’s “rain-check,” hardly a day passed without some reminder from him whether it was more flowers or tickets to some show, with always a scrawly note enclosed. Sarah waxed acidulous at these times, but Jerry remained amused. Her lessons she attended regularly, and found herself an increasing eagerness to do so. There was some sort of fascination in going to the studio and having Pa do things to her voice. Before two weeks had passed it was hard to believe that she had not always been interested in song. Not that there was much song about it. The scales and exercises that Pa made her go through were horrible to her, as they plainly showed the imperfections in her voice. She pled for songs, and he gave her old Italian airs which required even, smooth perfection of tone and discouraged her deeply. And then it was impossible for her to run up and down a scale with any degree of swiftness, and this inability made her almost weep at times. “Colorature!” she said bitterly to Jerry, one time when Jerry had come in and found her sitting in despair at the piano, her head in her hands. “When I can’t run up and down eight notes without sliding!” “You’ve got to begin slowly,” said Jerry. “_Walk_ up and down the scale, and when you’ve got it evenly matched and pointed, you’ll run like everything! Good God, Joy, if you get so down-in-the-mouth over a little scale work, what will you do when you get on a trill? I prophesy a nervous decline!” “But when I hear of Tetrazzini—studied seven months or so——”