make a newspaper reporter of you, willy-nilly. Then
you'll be sorry for poking fun at your elderly relative."

"It's only that I'm so used to discouragement from my elders and
betters that I'm familiar with the signs," returned Elsie. "Like as
not, if any one were to say, 'Hooray! Bully for you! Go in and win!'
I shouldn't understand. I should think they were kidding me."

"Poor child!" laughed Miss Pritchard, but she was really secretly
touched.

At this moment an artist Miss Pritchard had known for years, who always
spent his summers at this hotel, appeared before them. A man between
fifty and sixty, it was said of him that he had never succeeded;
younger, struggling artists said it was because of his handicap of a
fortune.

"Oh, Miss Marley, I wish I could persuade you to sing that again," he
said. "I caught a bit and a glimpse at a distance--just enough to
tantalize me."

Elsie, who admired Mr. Graham immensely, was seized with sudden
diffidence. He was a connoisseur in all matters of art. Suppose he
should say right before Miss Pritchard, that she was only a silly
tomboy, or whatever such a gentleman would say to express that idea?
She glanced irresolutely at Miss Pritchard.

"Go ahead, dear," said Miss Pritchard cheerfully, and turning to her
friend: "My little cousin thought I was scolding her, Mr. Graham. The
truth is, I'm the one who should be scolded. I chose the work I cared
for at about Elsie's age and went in for it; and yet when she chooses
hers, which happens to be the stage, I act the hen-with-the-duckling."

"Oh, Cousin Julia, you're the only one that has ever let me even speak
of it!" cried Elsie. Tears suddenly filled her eyes, and smiling
through them, she stepped back and began the song. And this time she
put in all the _frills_, as she expressed it. She danced and acted and
sang, and, as always, she was quite irresistible. The artist was
charmed.

"It's good enough for the vaudeville stage just as it is," he declared.
"There's only one fault."

"Oh, what is that?" the girl cried eagerly, with the artist's desire
for criticism, even though destructive.

"Your voice is too good--altogether too good. You could do it as well
and perhaps better with a voice far inferior to yours in range,
sweetness, and tone."

The girl gazed at him reproachfully. She had always had that to
contend with. People had always tried to "buy her off," as she
expressed it, by proposing that she