Part 3 (2/2)
”Yes; I do not care for the others,” she resumed. ”You praised me the night I first saw you.”
”It is perhaps zat you can sing to z' moon,” returned Mr. Pericles.
”But, what! a singer, she must sing in a house. To-night it is warm, to-morrow it is cold. If you sing through a cold, what noise do we hear?
It is a nose, not a voice. It is a trompet.”
Emilia, with a whimpering firmness, replied: ”You said I am lazy. I am not.”
”Not lazy,” Mr. Pericles a.s.sented.
”Do I care for praise from people who do not understand music? It is not true. I only like to please them.”
”Be a street-organ,” Mr. Pericles retorted.
”I must like to see them pleased when I sing,” said Emilia desperately.
”And you like ze clap of ze hands. Yez. It is quite natural. Yess. You are a good child, it is clear. But, look. You are a voice uncultivated, sauvage. You go wrong: I hear you: and dese claps of zese noodels send you into squeaks and shrills, and false! false away you go. It is a gallop ze wrong way.”
Here Mr. Pericles attempted the most horrible reproduction of Emilia's failure. She cried out as if she had been bitten.
”What am I to do?” she asked sadly.
”Not now,” Mr. Pericles answered. ”You live in London?--at where?”
”Must I tell you?”
”Certainly, you must tell me.”
”But, I am not going there; I mean, not yet.”
”You are going to sing to z' moon through z' nose. Yez. For how long?”
”These ladies have asked me to stay with them. They make me so happy.
When I leave them--then!”
Emilia sighed.
”And zen?” quoth Mr. Pericles.
”Then, while my money lasts, I shall stay in the country.”
”How much money?”
”How much money have I?” Emilia frankly and accurately summed up the condition of her treasury. ”Four pounds and nineteen s.h.i.+llings.”
”Hom! it is spent, and you go to your father again?”
”Yes.”
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