“Quit stringin’ me,” she said.

For a moment he was at a loss.  He gathered that she did not believe him, and crossed to the open window.

“If you will come here,” he said, “I will show you the room where he lies.  We hope to be able to take him to the hospital to-morrow.”  He paused a moment, and added:  “He enjoyed your music very much when he was better.”

The comment proved a touchstone.

“Say,” she remarked, with a smile that revealed a set of surprisingly good teeth, “I can make the box talk when I get a-goin’.  There’s no stopping me this side of grand opera,—­that’s no fable.  I’m not so bad for an enginoo, am I?”

Thus directly appealed to, in common courtesy he assented.

“No indeed,” he said.

“That’s right,” she declared.  “But the managers won’t have it at any price.  Those jays don’t know anything, do they?  They’ve only got a dream of what the public wants.  You wouldn’t believe it, but I’ve sung for ’em, and they threw me out.  You wouldn’t believe it, would you?”

“I must own,” said the rector, “that I have never had any experience with managers.”

She sat still considering him from the piano stool, her knees apart, her hands folded in her lap.  Mockery came into her eyes.

“Say, what did you come in here for, honest injun?” she demanded.

He was aware of trying to speak sternly, and of failing.  To save his life he could not, then, bring up before himself the scene in the little back room across the yard in its full terror and reality, reproduce his own feelings of only a few minutes ago which had impelled him hither.  A month, a year might have elapsed.  Every faculty was now centred on the woman in front of him, and on her life.

“Why do you doubt me?” he asked.

She continued to contemplate him.  Her eyes were strange, baffling, smouldering, yellow-brown, shifting, yet not shifty:  eyes with a history.  Her laugh proclaimed both effrontery and uneasiness.

“Don’t get huffy,” she said.  “The kid’s sick—­that’s on the level, is it?  You didn’t come ’round to see me?” The insinuation was in her voice as well as in her words.  He did not resent it, but felt an odd thrill of commingled pity and—­fear.

“I came for the reason I have given you,” he replied; and added, more gently:  “I know it is a good deal to ask, but you will be doing a great kindness.  The mother is distracted.  The child, as I told you, will be taken to the hospital in the morning.”

She reached out a hand and closed the piano softly.

“I guess I can hold off for to-night,” she said.  “Sometimes things get kind of dull—­you know, when there’s nothing doing, and this keeps me lively.  How old is the kid?”

“About nine,” he estimated.

“Say, I’m sorry.”  She spoke with a genuineness of feeling that surprised him.  He went slowly, almost apologetically toward the door.