Perhaps you happened to see her when she stepped out on that vast stage, looking tinier than she really was, with the lights shining on her satin-smooth hair and white neck, with the coral comb and the carved bracelets making bright spots of color. Do you remember how her wide green skirts spread about her as she made her deep curtsy? Do you remember her smile? Or were you rustling your program until you heard that deep contralto voice of hers beginning with, "What I am going to do for you I shall have to explain a little." There was a bald grouchy human in the front row, he honestly believed she was talking just to him! He leaned forward. "I am going to do some songs for you but I can't exactly sing--" The bald man grunted, he considered that plain foolishness and it was! "But I can play this lute a little--and I can whistle--" "Louder!" called the voices at the rear. She lifted her chin defiantly. "Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Maybe some of them are deaf like the Wheezy's friends, oh dear! How slowly I must speak!" she admonished herself in her thoughts. Her knees were shaking. But her voice lifted itself a bit; she enunciated carefully, "These are not new songs, they are just songs you know. So you'd better not look at me while I do them. You'd better shut your eyes and pretend--oh, I _do_ hope you're good at pretending--you must pretend that you are seeing the first person you heard sing these songs for you when you were little. The first one I heard, Marthy sang. Marthy was lean and small and ra-ther old. She lived over our stable in the cleanest rooms! With red geraniums in the windows!" Oh, do you remember the adorable way she took you into her confidence? Do you remember how strangely familiar she seemed? "Marthy used to sing 'Cherry Ripe.' Do you know it?" she asked so anxiously that one sympathetic soul murmured "yes" and hid her confusion in a cough as Mademoiselle Folly began, "It's about a young man who thinks his sweetheart's lips are like big ripe cherries, so he sings, "'Cherry Ripe, Cherry Ripe, Who will buy my cherries?'" She hummed the tune tentatively. She swung the narrow green ribbon of the lute over her shoulders and her fingers touched the strings. And then suddenly the soft flute-like trill of her wonderful whistle was wafted out toward them. Ah, who can describe the miracle, the mystery whereby her simple songs made them all feel young again! She was just a little seamstress, aged twenty-seven, who had lived an unreal life of sentiment and dreams and memories and they were just a sophisticated, tired, jaded audience. Some of them twisted their lips and scoffed. Some of them weren't especially moved by "Cherry Ripe," but the bald man in the front row pattered his hands together before she was through bowing and noisily told his neighbors, "Gee, that's the stuff. You can't beat the old stuff! S'lovely stuff--" A few pioneers about him pattered too. It was enough to encourage Felicia. She smiled.