Other people as well as Dale noticed the freshness and unforced music of Norah's singing, and it was not long before she received an invitation to sing among the regularly trained young women at the chapel.
On the morning when she left Dale's side to take her place upon the platform she was woefully nervous. Dale too had been anxious, but directly he heard her voice--and he knew it so well that he at once distinguished it amid all the other voices that made up the platform chorus--he felt perfectly reassured. Her nervousness had not put her out of tune: she was acquitting herself admirably.
They walked home together in a high state of gratification; and he hastened to tell Mavis that the little maid had achieved a success, and that Mr. Osborn had paid her a compliment at the door before everybody. Mavis was delighted. She ran to give kisses of congratulation, and she said that on her very next visit to Old Manninglea she would buy some stuff to make Norah a pretty new dress, which they would set to work on as soon as the evenings began to lengthen again.
A considerable time elapsed before this kind intention became an accomplished fact; but in due course the dress was ready to wear, and Norah looked very nice when wearing it. As to color, it was of so lively a blue that it would permit no shadows even in its deepest folds; it was just a close-fitting brightness that made the girl seem to have shot up in a night to a form of much greater height and increased slenderness. Her hat was made of yellow straw, with a wreath of artificial daisies round the crown. When the tempered sunshine fell upon her as she stood up to sing, she looked like something composed of vivid color, light, and life--like a flower glowing in a garden, a kingfisher hovering over a stream, a rainbow trembling on the crest of a hill. Dale, watching her, thought that in comparison the other maidens on the platform were positively plain.
He told Mavis afterward that he felt certain the dress had been admired, adding that Norah's general appearance did her the utmost credit. And that Sunday they both talked seriously about Norah's future.
"You know," said Dale, "I feel it as a responsibility on us."
"So do I," said Mavis.
"Having taken it up, we must go through with it to the end. I mean, we must always stand her friends--and more than that, her guardians."
"Of course."
"In a sense," he went on, didactically, "we may have made a mistake in bringing her forward to the extent we've done."