with a second-rate
teacher. My friends here tell me Harsanyi is the best."

"Oh, very likely! I have heard him play with Thomas. You Western people
do things on a big scale. There are half a dozen teachers that I should
think--However, you know what you want." Mr. Larsen showed his contempt
for such extravagant standards by a shrug. He felt that Dr. Archie was
trying to impress him. He had succeeded, indeed, in bringing out the
doctor's stiffest manner. Mr. Larsen went on to explain that he managed
the music in his church himself, and drilled his choir, though the tenor
was the official choirmaster. Unfortunately there were no vacancies in
his choir just now. He had his four voices, very good ones. He looked
away from Dr. Archie and glanced at Thea. She looked troubled, even a
little frightened when he said this, and drew in her lower lip. She,
certainly, was not pretentious, if her protector was. He continued to
study her. She was sitting on the lounge, her knees far apart, her
gloved hands lying stiffly in her lap, like a country girl. Her turban,
which seemed a little too big for her, had got tilted in the wind,--it
was always windy in that part of Chicago,--and she looked tired. She
wore no veil, and her hair, too, was the worse for the wind and dust.
When he said he had all the voices he required, he noticed that her
gloved hands shut tightly. Mr. Larsen reflected that she was not, after
all, responsible for the lofty manner of her father's physician; that
she was not even responsible for her father, whom he remembered as a
tiresome fellow. As he watched her tired, worried face, he felt sorry
for her.

"All the same, I would like to try your voice," he said, turning
pointedly away from her companion. "I am interested in voices. Can you
sing to the violin?"

"I guess so," Thea replied dully. "I don't know. I never tried."

Mr. Larsen took his violin out of the case and began to tighten the
keys. "We might go into the lecture-room and see how it goes. I can't
tell much about a voice by the organ. The violin is really the proper
instrument to try a voice." He opened a door at the back of his study,
pushed Thea gently through it, and looking over his shoulder to Dr.
Archie said, "Excuse us, sir. We will be back soon."

Dr. Archie chuckled. All preachers were alike, officious and on their
dignity; liked to deal with women and girls, but not with men. He took
up a thin volume from the minister's desk. To his amusem