silence. Hortense broke it.

"Parnassus, yes. And finally comes Apollo." She reached over and murmured
to Mrs. Phillips: "None too skillful on the lyre, and none too strong in
the lungs...."

Medora spoke up loudly and promptly.

"Do you know, I think I've heard you sing before."

"Possibly," Cope said, turning his back on the keyboard. "I sang in the
University choir for a year or two."

"In gown and mortar-board? 'Come, Holy Spirit,' and all that?"

"Yes; I sang solos now and then."

"Of course," she said. "I remember now. But I never saw you before without
your mortar-board. That changes the forehead. Yes, you're yourself," she
went on, adding to her previous pleasure the further pleasure of
recognition. "You've earned your tea," she added. "Hortense," she said over
her shoulder to the dark girl behind the sofa, "will you--? No; I'll pour,
myself."

She slid into her place at table and got things to going. There was an
interval which Cope might have employed in praising the artistic aptitudes
of this variously gifted household, but he found no appropriate word to
say,--or at least uttered none. And none of the three girls made any
further comment on his own performance.