from the pet of the Palais Royal. All wrong, thought Grover.
"Just wait till she springs her new name on the folks in Idaho Falls," laughed Floss.
"Well," Mamie defended herself, "they shouldn't have sprung Mamie nor yet Mangum on me, Try to get an audition with a name like that! . . . What shall I sing?"
"Anything but Carmen," said Floss positively. "I just can't bear it when you're being seductive."
Mamie went to the piano and communed with her accompanist.
"My sister sent her to me," explained Floss, sitting on a sofa and making room for Grover as he returned with glasses and joined the group around her. "Mamie had got herself as far east as Chicago to study for opera. Her voice was contralto but she discovered that all the good roles were written for sopranos, so by all that's logical Mamie started turning herself into a soprano. You'll hear the result in a minute. I've tried insult and everything, but she goes right on, and you can't help having a sporting feeling about it. What I say is, anybody who wants to sing that bad ought to be let."
As Flossie spoke, Mamie commenced to sing, bitterly. To Grover it seemed as though she shifted gears too audibly at the top and bottom of her register. In neutral she wasn't so bad—coasting. I wept in my sleep, she bawled, I dreamed that you were dead.
