Their mother had recently taken both girls to a near-by city for their first taste of grand opera, completing the effect by the purchase of a graphophone and opera records. Since that time Jacqueline had nourished the more or less secret ambition of becoming the world's greatest _diva_. She had taken to singing in church with an impassioned ardor which startled, even while it titillated, the ear of the congregation. As Mrs. Sykes put it, "Folks hadn't ought to sing hymns as if they was love-songs, no matter how nice it sounds." Jacqueline had not taken her family, even her adored mother, entirely into her confidence, having a shrewd conviction that her ambition would meet with slight encouragement from them. Of late, since the disturbance about Philip's father, both Jemima and her mother were too _distrait_, too absorbed in their own affairs, to pay much attention to Jacqueline. Whatever confidences trembled on her lips, remained unsaid. She felt that they had more important things to think about. Once, indeed, she had ventured to join her voice to that of the Victrola in the mad scene from "Lucia," acting at the same time her conception of the part; and her family, staring in amazement, had suddenly roared with laughter, the first laughter heard in that house for many a day. So Jacqueline and her hurt dignity sought refuge in the Ruin, there to rehearse her art hereafter untroubled by the jeers of an untemperamental world. Her faithful audience and inseparable companion was Mag's baby, who crowed and gurgled impartially over the woes of _La Tosca_, _Camille_ or _Manon_, having inherited the easy-going placidity of her mother. Sometimes Kate, coming and going about her work, paused to listen, smiling at the arias soaring up out of the ravine, and thought, "It is a good thing that child has all outdoors at her disposal! Whatever should I do with her between four walls?" Here, on the afternoon following her raid upon the raiders, Jacqueline posed and strutted happily, making the welkin ring with the piteousness of _Madame Butterfly_. From without came distant, languid, sounds of late summer, grass-mowers whirring in the hay-meadows, a stallion nickering in his stall for the freedom of the pasture, crickets and katydids shrilling their cheerful dirge for the summer that was passing. All of these sounds the girl knew and savored in the intervals between her singing. Now and then a bird hopped down from the branches that hung over the roofless cabin, and searched fearlessly for provender at her very feet. Mag's baby, on a bed of moss and leaves, crooned to herself, kicking fat legs toward heaven and clutching at stray sunbeams with futile hands. Jacqueline broke off. "Oh, dear, I could sing so much better if somebody would listen!" she complained aloud to the birds and the baby and the world at large. "It takes two to make real music, a singer and a listener."