"Yes," said Peter, "I've observed that." "But I feel it, Peter. That is so much more. Can you not understand? You have sometimes maybe look into the crystal. It is so when I look at the picture. Here is my nose again in the world. It is for something." "Maybe," suggested Peter, "it's a nose for news." Maria paid no attention. "Do you not see? If it is the failure that does not matter. Just so long as it is the possibility it is necessary that we try. "You don't begin to understand how far apart we are, Maria. I'll tell you frankly where I stand. Even if I knew Pat could be the greatest singer in the world I'd rather have him a newspaperman. That's my angle." "You are not serious." "But I am. Newspaper work's real. It's got roots into life. It is life. It makes people in the world a little different. Singing is just something you go and hear in the evening." "For you it is enough that he should go to the baseball and the football and perhaps the next war and write the book 'Lafayette Voulez Vous.'" Peter flushed. "I think there's more sense to it," he said. "And it's pretty probable that Pat'll think something like I do. We were together and you weren't there. And we went around together and talked about Matty and Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker." Maria looked a little puzzled. "You wouldn't know," said Peter a little bitterly, "they're none of them singers." "I didn't mean to be rotten," he added hastily. "I'm just trying to tell you the truth." Maria smiled. "It is all right. You tell me, Peter, the truth---- your truth." "Well, you see, Maria, he is like me. The nose may be you, but the rest is me. It's just got to be. In the beginning he wasn't anything but just sort of red clay or he was like a phonograph record before you cut the tune on it. He's been brought up around baseball games and newspaper offices. He knows, and everybody knows, that he's coming on the Bulletin and will take my place. In fact the job's been promised him. I'm not trying to lay down the law. It's just the way things are. I don't see what I could do about it even if I wanted to. He's all made by now. What's the use of my saying, 'Yes, let him go over and learn to be a singer.' It just hasn't been put in him." Peter paused. "I'm sorry, Maria. The trouble is he's a boy. If he'd been a girl I'd have jumped at the chance to have you make a singer of him. Newspaper work's no good for women." "And singing, it is not good for men?" asked Maria. "Well, as a matter of fact, I don't honestly think it is." "Peter, I understand better now what this is you feel, but it is not all the truth you say. When I go away he is red clay, that is what you say. It is not so simple. I have looked at him then and to me he was just what you have said. But it is more. Inside the clay all the time there is something. The little bug, I do not know what it is you call it." "Do you mean germ?"