"Oh, she'll give you some. There were many jolly things in those days to brighten the life of a country boy. The way the soft grass felt to bare feet in the spring, and in the frosty autumn mornings when we went to the yard to milk and would scare up the cows so those same bare feet could stand in the warm place where the cows had lain. Then came winter and snowdrifts--making snow huts and coasting down the hills. Sliding and skating on the ice-filled hollows. It was all great. I'm glad I had it." "You test my credulity, Mr. Barrison, when you speak of ice and snow in this poetic home of summer breezes." He looked down at her. "We will have a winter house-party at Grammy's sometime and convince you." "So at eight years of age you went out into the world?" "Yes, at my dear mother's apron strings. My father had spent some time with us every year and at last secured a living salary and took us to town. The first thing I did in the glitter of the blinking lamp-posts was to fall in love. I prayed every night for a long time that I might marry that girl. She had long curls and I reached just to her ear. I received her wedding cards a year or so ago. I was always praying for something, but only one of my prayers has ever been answered. I was always very devout in a thunderstorm, and I prayed that I might not be struck by lightning and I never have been yet." "When was your wonderful voice discovered?" "Look here, Miss Wilbur, you are tempting me to a whole biography, and it isn't interesting." "Yes, I am interested in--in your mother." "My poor mother," said Philip, in a different tone. "When I was twelve years old my father was taken ill and soon left us. My mother had to struggle and I had to stop school and go to work. The first job I got was lathing a house. I walked seven miles into the country and put the laths on that house. I worked hard for a whole week and received twelve dollars and seventy-five cents. It was a ten-dollar gold piece, two silver dollars, fifty cents, and a quarter." Diana lifted sympathetic eyes. "I bought a suit of clothes and gave up the gold piece. The perfect lady clerk failed to give me credit for it and six months afterward the store sent the bill to my mother. I put up a heated argument, you may be sure, and before the matter was settled, the perfect lady clerk skipped with another woman's husband. So the powers inclined to believe me rather than her." "Poor little boy," put in Diana. "But your music?" "Yes. Well, our minister's wife took an interest in me and gave me lessons on the organ. I never would practice, though. I would pick out hymns with one finger while I stood on one foot and pumped the pedal with the other. It was results I was after; but the cornet allured me, and I learned to play that well enough to join the Sunday-School orchestra.