less gifted daughter in London. So I ought to know all there is to
know about the management of a voice, if I have at all adequately
availed myself of such golden opportunities."

These quiet words were Greek to Myra, conveying no more to her mind
than if Jane had said: "I have been learning Tonic sol-fa." In fact,
not quite so much, seeing that Lady Ingleby had herself once tried
to master the Tonic sol-fa system in order to instruct her men and
maids in part-singing. It was at a time when she owned a distinctly
musical household. The second footman possessed a fine barytone. The
butler could "do a little bass," which is to say that, while the
other parts soared to higher regions, he could stay on the bottom
note if carefully placed there, and told to remain. The head
housemaid sang what she called "seconds"; in other words, she
followed along, slightly behind the trebles as regarded time, and a
major third below them as regarded pitch. The housekeeper, a large,
dark person with a fringe on her upper lip, unshaven and unashamed,
produced a really remarkable effect by singing the air an octave
below the trebles. Unfortunately Lady Ingleby was apt to confuse her
with the butler. Myra herself was the first to admit that she had
not "much ear"; but it was decidedly trying, at a moment when she
dared not remove her eyes from the accompaniment of Good King
Wenceslas, to have called out: "Stay where you are, Jenkins!" and
then find it was Mrs. Jarvis who had been travelling upwards. But
when a new footman, engaged by Lord Ingleby with no reference to his
musical gifts, chanced to possess a fine throaty tenor, Myra felt
she really had material with which great things might be
accomplished, and decided herself to learn the Tonic sol-fa system.
She easily mastered mi, re, do, and so, fa, fa, mi, because these
represented the opening lines of Three Blind Mice, always a musical