“Oh, in me spare time I keep me room and study in me books.”

“Do you work on the room or the books most?”

“On the room only what it takes to keep it up, and the rest of the time on me books.”

The Angel studied him closely.  “Well, maybe you are going to be a great scholar,” she said, “but you don’t look it.  Your face isn’t right for that, but it’s got something big in it—­something really great.  I must find out what it is and then you must work on it.  Your father is expecting you to do something.  One can tell by the way he talks.  You should begin right away.  You’ve wasted too much time already.”

Poor Freckles hung his head.  He never had wasted an hour in his life. 
There never had been one that was his to waste.

The Angel, studying him intently, read the thought in his face.  “Oh, I don’t mean that!” she cried, with the frank dismay of sixteen.  “Of course, you’re not lazy!  No one ever would think that from your appearance.  It’s this I mean:  there is something fine, strong, and full of power in your face.  There is something you are to do in this world, and no matter how you work at all these other things, or how successfully you do them, it is all wasted until you find the one thing that you can do best.  If you hadn’t a thing in the world to keep you, and could go anywhere you please and do anything you want, what would you do?” persisted the Angel.

“I’d go to Chicago and sing in the First Episcopal choir,” answered Freckles promptly.

The Angel dropped on a seat—­the hat she had removed and held in her fingers rolled to her feet.  “There!” she exclaimed vehemently.  “You can see what I’m going to be.  Nothing!  Absolutely nothing!  You can sing?  Of course you can sing!  It is written all over you.”

“Anyone with half wit could have seen he could sing, without having to be told,” she thought.  “It’s in the slenderness of his fingers and his quick nervous touch.  It is in the brightness of his hair, the fire of his eyes, the breadth of his chest, the muscles of his throat and neck; and above all, it’s in every tone of his voice, for even as he speak it’s the sweetest sound I ever heard from the throat of a mortal.”

“Will you do something for me?” she asked.

“I’ll do anything in the world you want me to,” said Freckles largely, “and if I can’t do what you want, I’ll go to work at once and I’ll try ’til I can.”

“Good!  That’s business!” said the Angel.  “You go over there and stand before that hedge and sing something.  Just anything you think of first.”

Freckles faced the Angel from his banked wall of brown, blue, and crimson, with its background of solid green, and lifting his face to the sky, he sang the first thing that came into his mind.  It was a children’s song that he had led for the little folks at the Home many times, recalled to his mind by the Angel’s exclamation: