take steps to enforce my rights, the law is on my side, that's clear
enough."

"I don't know! You heard what Doss said--about how you looked from
the front; and others have got their eyesight as well as him, and can
see you are not well and not--"

"Not fit to sing--that's what you are driving at?"

Saidie was silent.

"I tell you I will sing. Nothing and no one shall stop me. I shall
just defy them all, and go on, and there's no law in England to stop
me."

"If you are not a goose, Bella, I never saw one! What in all the
world keeps you on the boards, I cannot see. Here's a man come over
from N'York with the intention of marrying you; a man who is earning
his hundred dollars a week, and you turn up your nose at him. I can't
understand you. You seemed proud enough of him a week or two back;
but now all on a sudden, for no earthly reason, you show him the cold
shoulder."

"I suppose I can please myself," answered Bella, and her lip
quivered, and the tears began to roll down her cheeks.

"I wish to God I had never left--Jack," she said weakly.

Whereupon Saidie gave her what she was pleased to call a "piece of
her mind" as to the insane folly of any such speech, the result of