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divine. My little Jack, that’s no longer a boy, but has become a man. I’ve thought about her, Jack, and I’ve tried, in a way—”
    “To take her place?”
    “Well?”
    “I think you’re wonderful.”
    “And it was with her in mind, anyway quite a little with her in mind, that I made the arrangements for the records we’re going to do tomorrow. So she could hear them, and keep them. So, if you want really to do something for her, sing as well as you know how, and then when they’re made I’ll see that she gets them.”
    “You’re coming with me?”
    “Of course. I don’t leave for St. Louis until night.”
    The first number I was to record was The Glow Worm, which was to be done with the cutie pies. The studio was in Camden, New Jersey, and they went by train, with a man from the company. But Miss Eleanor drove me in her little green coupé, after quite some argument about it when she took me home. The Old Man was all for having a showdown about me running out of the house, but she had to get it through his head that a boy who has to stand up in front of a symphony orchestra and do a performance can’t be put through a workout the night before with a hair brush. But on the chorus, where I was to do an obbligato with the others singing under me, I had hardly started when I broke. They put in a new master and we got going again. I broke again. Miss Eleanor said something to the conductor about my having had a trying time the day before and took me outside in the hall. She made me take a drink from the water bubbler, then squeezed my hand and brought me back. “All right, sir, I think I’m all right now.”
    But even as I was talking to him my voice popped. And one of the bull fiddlers said: “That boy’s got the goslins.”
    It was the cutie pies’ turn, and from the way they yelped I knew what was the matter with me, and that that ended my days as a soprano. Miss Eleanor didn’t take me home right away. She took me to her house, and phoned my aunts about it, and made me some supper, and had me ride with her in the cab to the train she was taking for St. Louis. It wasn’t till we were in Union Station, sitting on one of the benches in the waiting room, that she really said anything about it. “Now nothing has happened. You’re going to forget it.”
    “It’s all right. I don’t care.”
    “But you must care!”
    “For that bunch of—”
    “For yourself! And singing and music and beauty and doing things well and everything we’ve been so excited about! Hasn’t it meant anything to you?”
    “Why, sure. But if I’ve got the pip—”
    “Don’t you know why? You’re a man!”
    She put her arm around me and looked at me a long time and smiled. “You’re growing up so fast, and I’m so proud of you! And soon it won’t be a boy’s voice any more, but a man’s, much more beautiful, and then we’ll go on, and—”
    She kept on talking like that, but pretty soon came the rumble of her train, and I went down to the platform with her to see her aboard. She wouldn’t let me take her to her berth, but said goodbye on the step, after the redcap went aboard with her things. We shook hands, and she pushed her cheek against my face, and I remembered to wish her well with the engagement. She turned to go, then came running down the steps again, pulled me to her, and kissed me warm on the mouth, the only time she did, ever. Then she ran into the car.

5
    B UT WE NEVER WENT on with my voice, because in the first place when it got through turning it was nothing but a beer-barrel bass, just good enough, with what was left of the belly support she had given me, to fool somebody that didn’t know anything about music, and just bad enough, from the wood that had got into it, to set crazy somebody that did. And in the second place she never came back, except once, when she dropped by the house at the end of the summer to say hello, after she got home from the opera. I was plenty glad to see her, and