“You have some other work, then?” said Solly to Monica.

“She’s a clerk at the plant where her Dad works,” said Beamis. “In the Costing Department, Monny did very well in Commercial at High. But you’re wrong when you say you haven’t heard Monny; she sang at your dear Mother’s funeral. A lovely little Classic—My Task—sweet thing. And did you realize that Monny had never seen or heard of it until eighteen hours before she went on the air—sorry, before the sad occasion? Mr Cobbler brought it to her the night before; she ran through it a coupla times with him; sang it perfectly at three the next afternoon. Monny’s quite a little trouper. Get up anything at short notice and turn in a fine performance. Not many singers can do that. You’ve heard her, and you didn’t even notice!” Pastor Beamis laughed chidingly.

“Our attention was elsewhere,” said Miss Puss, and the Pastor’s rubber face immediately assumed an expression of understanding and condolence; but he was not abashed, which was what she had hoped for.

“I think we should hear Miss Gall now,” said Solly. “I’ll ask Mr Cobbler to come in.”

“Well?” said Solly to the executors, when at last Beamis had herded his charges out of the house and disappeared, still talking, down the walk. “What did you think of her?”

“There is no question in my mind that she is a very nice girl,” said the Dean. “It seemed to me that she handled herself modestly and with dignity in a difficult situation. But whether she is the girl we are looking for is very much an open question. I’m not impressed by her parents, or by that man, who seems to be a dominating influence in her life—if I may make such a remark without being accused of Phariseeism,” he added, cocking an eye at Solly.

“I suppose it’s ability, rather than character, that we’re looking for,” said Solly, avoiding the glance and looking at Snelgrove.

“Are they ever found apart?” said the lawyer.

“Very often, in the arts, I believe. Are we going to hold it against the girl that her parents are stupid and dominated by a quack evangelist? I thought she seemed intelligent and pleasant. If she can really profit by the kind of training we are able to give her—I should say, that we can pay for—isn’t that the main thing?”

“Unless you believe that the girl is a genius, and so beyond the usual rules of probability, you must certainly take these other things into account,” said the Dean. “You can educate her beyond her parents, and make her into something that they might not recognize, but you will not really raise her very far. You can polish and mount a pebble, but it remains a pebble. I do not blame the girl, of whom I know no more than the rest of you, but it is plain that she is being exploited by that creature Beamis; she sings in his quartet, which consists otherwise of his own family, and which I happen to know coins money. If she were a person of real character—more character than her parents, for instance—would she put up with that?”

“She’s only twenty, Mr Dean,” said Solly, “and, saving your reverence, it is not easy for a very young person to rebel against a clergyman who has full parental support. It seems to me that her voice is the real clue to the problem. What did you think of it?”

“I really can’t say,” said the Dean. “I was so embarrassed by the things she sang. I don’t pretend to a deeply informed taste in music, but really—!”

“I can’t quite agree,” said Miss Puss, who had sat in uncharacteristic silence since the Galls left. “I was greatly moved by her singing of Tosti’s Good-Bye!–a song I have not heard in many, many years. I suppose I am the only person here who recalls that it was the favourite ballad of Queen Victoria. Unfashionable now, possibly, but truly touching. Once, many years ago, I heard Melba sing it. And, do you know, this girl reminded me uncannily of Melba? Did you feel that?”

She had turned to Snelgrove. He had never heard Melba, but he knew she had been intensely patriotic during the First Great War, and was therefore an artist of the highest rank, so he frowned in a critical fashion and replied, “Not quite Melba, perhaps, but I felt there was a smack of Clara Butt.”

This remark set Miss Puss and the lawyer off in a competition of recalling all the great singers they had heard, and as neither had wide experience this quickly became all the great singers they had heard of, whose names they brought up with apparent casualness; they did not say they had heard these queens of song, but they were not unwilling that others should think so; in charity it may be assumed that they had heard them on the gramophone. The names of Emma Eames, Amelita Galli-Curci, Geraldine Farrar, Louise Homer, Luisa Tetrazzini and Ernestine Schumann-Heink were used very freely, and startling comparisons drawn, without much regard for whether these ladies had been sopranos or contraltos. This cultivated pow-wow did much to raise the spirits of Miss Puss and Mr Snelgrove, and to give them, for the first time, a sense that they were patrons of art and fountains of culture. When the lawyer had scored heavily by dragging in “our great Canadian diva, Madame Albani, whom I was once lucky enough to hear in Montreal” Solly thought that this had gone far enough.

“Perhaps we should return to the present day and hear what the one expert among us thinks of Monica Gall’s voice,” said he. Cobbler, who had remained at the piano, dug vigorously into his hair with his fingers, until it stood on end like the wool of a Hottentot. Then he fixed the executors with his bright black eyes.

“Nice voice,” said he. “Nice tone; well-placed, really, considering that she’s had no training at all. But that’s the trouble, you see: maybe we’ve heard all there is. Maybe nothing further would come, however much you trained it. Oh, that’s not quite fair; it would be bound to develop a little bit, but who can say how much? Promising, probably. But how can you tell? We didn’t really hear enough.”

“Then why did you not ask to hear more?” said Snelgrove. He liked an expert to behave like an expert, and not temporize.

“We could have listened to her for another hour without learning anything more than we did. Her music was terrible. I knew how things stood as soon as she opened her portfolio; it was jampacked with that awful cheap music printed on grey paper. All tripe. Good-Bye! was her star piece; I suppose Beamis thinks it’s a classic. So it is, in the musical hell he and the Heart and Hope Quartet inhabit. To find out what her voice is really like, you’d have to work with her for a few months—increase her range, give her something to sing that would show what she could do, and generally explore the possibilities.”

“That’s not very helpful,” said Miss Puss.

“I’m afraid it isn’t. But it’s honest. There’s one thing to be said in the girl’s favour. She’s stood out against some very bad musical influences; her only teacher, I understand, is an aunt who plays the piano a little. And the Beamis association is abominable; couldn’t imagine anything more calculated to wreck a voice and debauch a singer’s taste. Yet, the fact is that the girl sings with a good deal of taste and a nice feeling for the words, considering the stuff she’s singing. It must be native to her, though where she gets it I can’t imagine. You’re dead right, Miss Pottinger; she really did tear off old Good-Bye! with quite a sense of style, and it’s not the easiest song in the world. There may be something there, if you want to dig for it.”

“We haven’t any time for digging,” said Solly. “We’re desperate; the income on something like a million dollars has to be spent on somebody, beginning not later than next December 23. Can’t we get some clearer opinion than what you’ve said?”

“Not from me,” said Cobbler. “I can’t square a flat Yes or No with my professional honesty; if I say she’s no good I may be wronging you and the girl, and if I say she’s a wonder the odds are just as strong that I am wrong. Certainly, if it were a question of some lessons with me, I’d say go ahead. I’d be happy to get such a pupil. But you are going to spend such a lot of money; you’ve got to show big results or look silly. If you want another opinion, I know where you can get one.”