when an old gentleman in the company (who was
seen to wipe tears away when the girls sang "Darby and Joan") engaged
them to sing at his golden wedding the next night. That was the
beginning of a season of modest prosperity. Tommy's baritone had
married his new accompanist (he seemed determined to have a
piano-playing wife), and wishing to show Miss Tucker that his heart
was not broken by her rejection, he gave a handsome party and engaged
the quartette, paying for their services in real coin of the realm.
Other appearances followed in and out of town, and Tommy paid for her
gray dress, spent a goodly sum for an attack of tonsillitis, the
result of overwork, and still saved two hundred dollars. The season
was over. She was fagged, but not disheartened. Who is at twenty-two?
But it was late April, and drawing-room entertainments were no more.
The two hundred dollars when augmented by the church salary would
barely take her through till October.

"It is very annoying," thought Tommy, "when you have to eat, drink,
sleep, and dress twelve months in the year, that the income by which
you do these things should cease abruptly for four months. Still,
furriers can't sell furs in hot weather, and summer boarders can't
board in winter, so I suppose other people have to make enough money
in eight months to spend in twelve."

"'Hark, hark, the lark at Heaven's gate sings,
And Phoebus 'gins to rise!'"

she caroled, splashing about in her morning tub as she finished making
these reflections, the tub being an excellent place for trills and
scales.

Proceeding from tub to her sitting-room to make things ready for
toilet and breakfast, her mind ran on her little problems.

"I want to learn more, see more, hear more," she thought. "I have one
of those nasty, unserviceable, betwixt-and-between talents: voice not
high enough for 'Robert, toi que j'aime,' nor low enough for
'Staendchen'; not flexible enough for 'Caro Nome,' nor big enough for
'Ocean, Thou Mighty Monster'; poor French accent, worse German;
awfully good English, but that doesn't count. Can sing old ballads,
folk-songs, and nice, forgotten things that make dear old gentlemen
and ladies cry--but not pay. If I were billed at all, it ought to be

"First Appearance in Public[[v:small-caps]]
of[[v:small-caps]]
Behind-the-Times Tommy"[[v:small-caps]]

This appellation so tickled her fancy tha