"I do not know what it may develop into," he said,--"that is something
we cannot foretell,--but I believe it will be a great voice in the
world. I do know that it will be a wonderful voice for the choir."

She stood before him mute with emotion. She was as dry sand drinking a
shower.

"You have made no mistake," she said. "It is a great voice and he will
have a great career."

The choir-master was impatient to have the lessons begin. She asked for
a few days to get him in readiness. She reflected that he could not make
his first appearance at the choir school in white linen knickerbockers.
These were the only suitable clothes he had.

This school would be his first, for she had taught him at home, haunted
by a sense of responsibility that he must be specially guarded. Now just
as the unsafe years came on for him, he would be safe in that fold. When
natural changes followed as follow they must and his voice broke later
on, and then came again or never came again, whatever afterward befell,
behind would be the memories of his childhood. And when he had grown to
full manhood, when he was an old man and she no longer with him,
wherever on the earth he might work or might wander, always he would be
going back to those years in the cathedral: they would be his safeguard,
his consecration to the end.

* * * * *

Now a few days later she stood in the same favorite spot, at her