“We’ll talk about that again,” said Shackleton; “I’m going to see Mr. Lepine before he goes and have another talk about you. You see, you’re becoming a very important young lady.” The carriage rolled up and Mariposa was assisted in, several street boys watching her with wide-eyed interest as evidently a personage of distinction. Her face at the window smiled a radiant farewell at the group on the sidewalk; then she sank back breathless. What an afternoon! Would the carriage ever get her home, that she might pour it all out to her mother! What a thrilling, wonderful, unheard-of afternoon! CHAPTER VI THE VISION AND THE DREAM “For a dream cometh through the multitude of business.” --ECCLESIASTES. As the carriage turned the corner into Third Street, Shackleton and Mrs. Willers, bidding their adieux to Lepine, started toward _The Trumpet_ office. The building was not ten minutes’ walk away, and both the proprietor and the woman reporter had work there that called them. In their different ways each was exceedingly elated. The man, with his hard, bearded face, the upper half shaded by the brim of his soft felt hat, gave no evidence in appearance or manner of the exultation that possessed him. But the woman, with her more febrile and less self-contained nature, showed her excited gratification in her reddened cheeks and the sparkling animation of her tired eyes. Her state of joyous triumph was witnessed even in her walk, in the way she swished her skirts over the pavements, in the something youthful and buoyant that had crept into the tones of her voice. “Well,” she said, “that _was_ an experience worth having! I never heard her sing so before. She just outdid herself.” “She certainly seemed to me to sing well. I was doubtful at the beginning, not knowing any more about singing than I do about Sanskrit, as to whether she really had as fine a voice as we thought. But there don’t seem to me to be any doubt about it now.” “Lepine is quite certain, is he?” queried Mrs. Willers, who had tried to listen to the conversation between her chief and the impresario on the way out, but had been foiled by Mariposa’s excited chatter. “He says that she has an unusually fine voice, which, with proper training, would, as far as they can say now, be perfectly suitable for grand opera. It’s what they call a dramatic mezzo-soprano, with something particularly good about the lower notes. Lepine is to see me again before he goes.” “Did he suggest what she ought to do?” “Yes; he spoke of Paris as the best place to send her. He knows some famous teacher there that he says is the proper person for her to study with. He seemed to think that two years of study would be sufficient for her. She’d be ready to make her appearance in grand opera after that time.”