She emitted a loud vibrant note that rolled restlessly between the four walls, as if in an effort to find more space wherein to expand, and her hands fell upon the keys. In the room opening off the parlor there was an uncertain play of light from an unseen fire, and a muffled shape lying on the sofa. To this she now addressed a query in a voice in which dejection was veiled by uneasy inquiry: “Well, does it seem to improve? Or is it still like a cow when she’s lost her calf?” “It’s wonderfully improved,” came the answer from the room beyond; “I don’t think any one sings like you. Anyway, no one has such a powerful voice.” “No one howls so, you mean! Oh, mother, do you suppose I _ever_ shall be able to take any more lessons?” “Oh, yes, of course. We are in a large city now. Even if you don’t make enough money yourself, there are often people who become interested in fine voices and educate them. Perhaps you’ll meet one of them some day. And anyway--” with cheerfulness caught on the upward breath of a sigh--“you’ll make money enough soon yourself.” Mariposa’s head bent over the keys. When she came to view it this way, her sixteen dollars a month did not seem so big with promise as it did when ten dollars for rent was all it had to yield up. “I’ve heard about those rich people who are looking for prima donnas to develop, but I don’t know where to find them, and I don’t see how they’re to find me. The only way I can ever attract their notice is to sing on the street corner with a guitar, like Rachel. And then I’d have to have a license, and I’ve got no money for that.” She rose, and swept with the gait of a queen into the next room. Her mother was lying on a sofa drawn closely to a tiny grate, in which a handful of fire flickered. Lucy was still a pretty woman, with a thin, faded delicacy of aspect. Her skin was singularly white, especially on her hands, which were waxen. Though love and happiness had given her back her youth, her health had never recovered her child’s rude birth in the desert and the subsequent journey across the Sierra. She had twined round and clung to the man whom she had called her husband, and with his loss she was slowly sinking out of the world his presence had made sweet for her. Her daughter--next in adoration to the hero who had succored her in her hour of extremity--had no power to hold her. Lucy was slowly fading out of life. The girl had no knowledge of this. Her mother had been a semi-invalid for several years, and her own youth was so rich in its superb vigor, that she did not notice the elder woman’s gradual decline of vitality. But the mother knew, and her nights were wakeful and agonized with the thought of her child, left alone, poor and unfriended.