general scramble of American life, where every one
comes to grab and takes his chance.

While they were eating dessert, Thea asked Harsanyi if she could change
her Tuesday lesson from afternoon to morning. "I have to be at a choir
rehearsal in the afternoon, to get ready for the Christmas music, and I
expect it will last until late."

Harsanyi put down his fork and looked up. "A choir rehearsal? You sing
in a church?"

"Yes. A little Swedish church, over on the North side."

"Why did you not tell us?"

"Oh, I'm only a temporary. The regular soprano is not well."

"How long have you been singing there?"

"Ever since I came. I had to get a position of some kind," Thea
explained, flushing, "and the preacher took me on. He runs the choir
himself. He knew my father, and I guess he took me to oblige."

Harsanyi tapped the tablecloth with the ends of his fingers. "But why
did you never tell us? Why are you so reticent with us?"

Thea looked shyly at him from under her brows. "Well, it's certainly not
very interesting. It's only a little church. I only do it for business
reasons."

"What do you mean? Don't you like to sing? Don't you sing well?"

"I like it well enough, but, of course, I don't know anything about
singing. I guess that's why I never said anything about it. Anybody
that's got a voice can sing in a little church like that."

Harsanyi laughed softly--a little scornfully, Thea thought. "So you have
a voice, have you?"

Thea hesitated, looked intently at the candles and then at Harsanyi.
"Yes," she said firmly; "I have got some, anyway."

"Good girl," said Mrs. Harsanyi, nodding and smiling at Thea. "You must
let us hear you sing after dinner."

This remark seemingly closed the subject, and when the coffee was
brought they began to talk of other things. Harsanyi asked Thea how she
happened to know so much about the way in which freight trains are
operated, and she tried to give him some idea of how the people in
little desert towns live by the railway and order their lives by the
coming and going of the trains. When they left the diningroom the
children were sent to bed and Mrs. Harsanyi took Thea into the studio.
She and her husband usually sat there in the evening.

Although their apartment seemed so elegant to Thea, it was small and
cramped. The studio was the only spacious room. The Harsanyis were poor,
and it was due to Mrs. Harsanyi's good management that their lives, even
in hard times, mo