not have objected to that. Nevertheless, the invitation impressed Mrs. Loamford with Arnold’s generosity. Tommy Borge, after an inexplicable silence of several weeks, sent a highly literary letter from a little town in Connecticut, where, he announced, he would spend several months writing a play, of which no more was heard thereafter. The girls of Miss Blagden’s School had long since scattered. There was little company in town. Mr. Loamford’s activities at the office precluded a vacation until late in July. Except for the almost daily sessions with Madame Schneider, Dorothy had little to do. Lessons were to end temporarily when the Loamfords went to a little colony in Maine, where Dorothy was the only person between the ages of twelve and forty-three. In September Dorothy was to continue “in earnest,” as her mother explained.
Madame Schneider was painstaking and she quoted many authorities, but her method struck Dorothy as singularly futile. There were breathing exercises without end, queer little tunes sung through the nose, tones produced in strange ways on different vowels—but music? There was no singing as such. When, in the privacy of her room, she tried to sing some of the songs she used to know, she could discover no change in the results and the old difficulties with low tones and high notes were still there.
It wasn’t at all as she had imagined it. She had read of the early struggles of famous singers—Madame Schneider insisted that her pupils know something of the history of song—but in all of these there had been something exciting. There was nothing exciting about taking lessons from Madame Schneider and very little to show for it.
Wouldn’t it be a good idea to leave home and to take
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