was a freight-train in motion. Pulling ont with slow, impressive, scraping puffs, gathering momentum until it was rattling heavily along, hoarsely shrieking as it approached the tunnel, rumbling sotto voce until it emerged into the light again, hurrying now toward the station, ascending grade and all, with a triumphant howl fortissimo, and at length pulling up with a long grinding hiss diminuendo. And if the train got switched on a wrong siding,—well, in modern opera it was the spirit that counted.
But Mamie's Ave Maria's, as she presently proved, were not essentially unlike her Ho-jo-to-ho's; the most noticeable difference was in the accompaniments. And some late callers that afternoon heard her screaming, d'après Victor Hugo and Reynaldo Hahn, that if her verses had wings they would fly night and day, which was easy to believe, but fearsome to contemplate.
The phenomenon was not that Mamie sang badly, that she sang even abominably; the phenomenon was that the people who heard her thought she sang well. They even encouraged her to sing, as who should fervently pray, In the name of Art, crucify us. And after hearing their applause and their compliments, Grover was forced to conclude that, as singers went, perhaps Mignon Mangini wasn't one of the worst. Heaven knew the best were hard to find.
In the redistribution that took place after the music, Grover found himself shackled to Mamie again, in a corner of the room whence all but he had fled. She
