“You heard that? That night you came? Well, it was a foolish boast of mine. You practiced it as you have practiced other things, for the groundwork on which you’ll build.” “You mean I’m not good enough. Then why have you told me I’m good?” “You’re too good to spoil.” “But I’m spoiling now.” “No: you’re learning.” She cried piteously and when, surprisingly, that did not move him, she sulked and refused to eat and managed to make herself so unwell that work was out of the question and Mrs. Butterworth was guilty of disloyalty to Walter. “She’ll fret herself into a decline,” she said. “You’d best give way to her.” “She’ll damage her voice if this goes on,” he had to admit. “Can’t you talk sense to her?” and Mrs. Butter-worth, swinging back to her allegiance, promised she would try, but her talking was to ears that were deaf. Mary Ellen, appealed to in the name of gratitude she owed Walter, was stubbornly unmoved. “I was better off in the streets,” she said. “I sang. People heard me.” Mrs. Butterworth held up her hands in scandalized protest. “Oh, dearie!” she said, incapable of more. “Why am I kept down like this?” demanded Mary Ellen. “Mr. Pate knows best.” “He knows he’s got me in prison. He thinks he can amuse himself by trying his experiments on me. His perfect system that has never been tried before! No, because nobody would stand it, so he picked me off the street to have me to try it on because he thought I was helpless. He doesn’t care about me. I’m not a girl. I’m not human flesh and blood. I’m a thing with a voice that he’s testing a system on, and he thinks I’ll let him go on testing till he’s tired of it. Years, he said. Years in a prison! Years, while he bribes me to stand it by making lying promises--” “Oh! he never!” said Mrs. Butterworth, stung to defend Walter, though secretly in sympathy with much of her passionate distortion of his motives. “He did! He said I was to sing solo in the ‘Messiah’ and now he says I shan’t. He isn’t tired of his experiments yet.” “I’m sure he means it for your good.” “Yes. Father’s licked me saying that and loving me I’m being kept down for his pleasure and I’m tired if he isn’t. I’m going back to the streets.” “That’s foolish talk, Mary.” “I’m going to sing somewhere. That may be foolish, but it’s fact.” “Well, I’ll tell him. Now eat your breakfast.” “No,” said Mary Ellen, hunger-striker, and Mrs. Butterworth reported a total failure in guarded misquotation of the rebel. “I can put bacon before her, but I cannot make her eat. And she’ll run away. She will, as sure as eggs are eggs, and you’ll lose her then. We can’t lock her up.”