She repeated the fable of her father’s early acquaintance with Jake Shackleton, and of the latter’s desire expressed to Mrs. Willers, of hearing her sing. “Mrs. Willers is such an ass!” he said suddenly and vindictively. Mariposa was this time hurt for her friend and spoke up: “I don’t see why you say that. I don’t think a woman’s an ass who can support herself and a child as she does,”--she thought of her sixteen dollars and added: “It’s very hard for a woman to make money.” “Oh, she’s not an ass that way,” he answered. “She’s an ass to try and work Shackleton up to the point of becoming a patron of the arts--as represented by you.” He turned on her with a slight smile, that brought no suggestion of amusement to his somewhat saturnine face. “Isn’t that her idea?” he asked. Mariposa felt her hopes as to the training of her voice becoming mean and vulgar. “He said he wanted to hear me,” she said stumblingly, “and she said it would be a good thing. And I have no money to educate my voice, and it’s all I have. Why do you seem to disapprove of it?” “I?--disapprove? That would hardly do. Why even if I wanted to, I have not the right to, have I?” Mariposa’s face flushed. She felt now, that she had presupposed an intimacy between them which he wanted politely to suggest did not exist. This was not by any means the first time Essex had baffled and embarrassed her. It amused him to do it, but to-day he was in a bad temper and did it from spleen. “Somehow Jake Shackleton doesn’t suggest himself to me as a patron of the arts,” he said. “I don’t think he knows Yankee Doodle from God Save the Queen.” Mariposa thought of the brilliant article on the Italian opera, from Bellini to Verdi, that the man beside her had contributed to last Sunday’s _Trumpet_, and Jake Shackleton’s enthusiastic admiration of her singing immediately seemed the worthless praise of sodden ignorance. “Then,” she said desperately, “you wouldn’t attach any importance, if you were I, to his liking my singing? It was just the way some people like a street organ simply because it plays tunes.” “Oh, I wouldn’t think that. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t know a good voice when he hears it.” “Do _you_ think I’ve got a good voice?” said Mariposa, stopping in the street and staring morosely at him. “Of course I do, dear lady.” “Do you, really?” “Yes, really.” She smiled, and tried to hide it by looking down. It was hardly in man to continue bad-humored before this naïve display of pleasure at his commending word. “You really think I might some day become a singer, a professional singer?” “I really do.” The smile broadened and lit her face. “You always make me feel so stupid--and--and--as if I didn’t amount to anything,” she murmured. It was so sweet, so childishly candid, that it melted the last remnant of his bad temper.