"Don't be frightened, and don't be sorry that I know," he said, gently. "I think you ought to have told me before." She ventured to lift a pair of very anxious eyes. "I don't blame you. You are an unfortunate child." "Child? I am in my sixteenth year," she interposed, with dignity. "You are an unfortunate child," he repeated, firmly, "with a great deal of surplus energy. It must go somewhere. It's a law of nature; only I hadn't quite realized how it was with you. You never seemed at a loss." "You knew I was just dying for want of proper music-lessons." She could not keep the excited tears out of her eyes. "Well, well!" her father muttered, leaning with both hands on his stick and scrutinizing the dust. "I wonder if a few music-lessons couldn't be managed." "A few? I don't want a _few_: I want months and years! I want to act and sing in grand opera, and--be famous," she said, to herself, but aloud--"make heaps of money." Her father turned to walk back to the town, saying, calmly: "Oh, as to acting and singing, _that_ of course--" She opened her eyes wide. Did he understand? Was he going to relent? "A young person's wanting to go on the stage and astonish the world with her genius--that's natural enough." Val began to shrink. She hadn't mentioned genius. "It's a very usual sentiment, I believe, among young people," he went on, in the same calm voice. "It's a ferment natural to their time of life--not very serious, any more than first love or measles." Val grew stiffer and more dignified with each word he uttered. "Anybody would think from what _you_ say, father"--she was holding herself down with difficulty--"that people all gave up music when they arrived at years of discretion. There _is_ such a person as Patti after all, and there may be somebody somewhere _better_ than Patti, just"--her voice began to shake--"just waiting for a little help." "Ah, better than Patti!" He smiled. The look of tender amusement fell like a lash upon the spirit of his child. "Oh yes, it's all very well to laugh, father. _You_ don't care. Nothing matters any more to you. I dare say, even when you were young, you didn't know what it was like to feel that you'd be chopped up into little fine pieces rather than go on in the old dull way that most people do." A quick, dim look, like the ghost of an ancient pain, flitted over the worn face of the man; but he walked on, saying nothing.