“Really, it is quite abominable how women thrust themselves into every profession,” she remarked, in her masculine voice.  “It is so unfeminine, so unseemly.”

There was nothing of the feminine about Miss Blake; her horse-cloth dress, her waistcoat and high collar, and her billycock hat were of the masculine genus; even her nerves could not be called feminine, since we learn from two or three doctors (taken off their guard) that nerves are neither feminine nor masculine, but common.

“I should like to see this tuner,” said one of the tennis-players, leaning against a tree.

“Here she comes,” said Miss Blake, as the little girl was seen sauntering into the garden.

The men put up their eye-glasses, and saw a little lady with a childish face and soft brown hair, of strictly feminine appearance and bearing.  The goat came toward her and began nibbling at her frock.  She seemed to understand the manner of goats, and played with him to his heart’s content.  One of the tennis players, Oswald Everard by name, strolled down to the bank where she was having her frolic.

“Good-afternoon,” he said, raising his cap.  “I hope the goat is not worrying you.  Poor little fellow! this is his last day of play.  He is to be killed to-morrow for table d’hote.”

“What a shame!” she said.  “Fancy to be killed, and then grumbled at!”

“That is precisely what we do here,” he said, laughing.  “We grumble at everything we eat.  And I own to being one of the grumpiest; though the lady in the horse-cloth dress yonder follows close upon my heels.”

“She was the lady who was annoyed at me because I tuned the piano,” the little girl said.  “Still, it had to be done.  It was plainly my duty.  I seemed to have come for that purpose.”

“It has been confoundedly annoying having it out of tune,” he said.  “I’ve had to give up singing altogether.  But what a strange profession you have chosen!  Very unusual, isn’t it?”

“Why, surely not,” she answered, amused.  “It seems to me that every other woman has taken to it.  The wonder to me is that any one ever scores a success.  Nowadays, however, no one could amass a huge fortune out of it.”

“No one, indeed!” replied Oswald Everard, laughing.  “What on earth made you take to it?”

“It took to me,” she said simply.  “It wrapped me round with enthusiasm.  I could think of nothing else.  I vowed that I would rise to the top of my profession.  I worked day and night.  But it means incessant toil for years if one wants to make any headway.”

“Good gracious!  I thought it was merely a matter of a few months,” he said, smiling at the little girl.

“A few months!” she repeated, scornfully.  “You are speaking the language of an amateur.  No; one has to work faithfully year after year; to grasp the possibilities, and pass on to greater possibilities.  You imagine what it must feel like to touch the notes, and know that you are keeping the listeners spellbound; that you are taking them into a fairy-land of sound, where petty personality is lost in vague longing and regret.”