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Oh, there would be no lack of a soul in her singing, out there in the moonlight. Signor Firenzo would not have lectured and entreated her in vain. She knew now what he meant. She had been longing to sing, many an evening on the starlit lagoons, and she had not dared.
One of them has got the accent and the other the grammar, so they pull very well together. Then the younger one can sing like a bird." The Colonel was warming to his subject, and the Signora, as he liked to call her, did not interrupt. "She has been studying with Firenzo in Rome. He says she's got a tip-top voice and plenty of execution. Sketches, too, not particularly well, though.
When papa came on deck, he told us that Sir Harry Burrard Neale, who commanded the San Firenzo, was at school at Christchurch before he went to sea, that on one occasion, when playing a game of "follow my leader," he, being the leader, mounted to the top of the tower, and managed to scramble down again outside, few, if any, of the boys daring to follow him.
"Perhaps Signor Firenzo is a better judge of voices than of souls," Pauline suggested, with a confident little smile. "A young girl like you hasn't any business with a soul," Uncle Dan declared. "If you think you see one coming over the lagoon you had better turn round and look at the Lion of St. Mark's. He hasn't the sign of a soul, yet he's the best of good fellows, as anybody can see."
Pauline asked, as the lights of the Riva appeared in their line of vision, glimmering remotely on the shore and in the water. "Especially when you were singing that glorious Patria? I thought of what Signor Firenzo said about your voice, and of what you said yourself, that first day in Venice, about finding a soul here." "You did?" May exclaimed; then, in a lower voice: "So did I!"
Then, with the directness which characterised her, she said: "I was wondering whether one might not perhaps find a soul here in Venice." "A soul? What kind of a soul?" "Oh, any sort would do, I suppose. You know Signor Firenzo told me my voice was bellissima, but that I hadn't any soul."
Her things look right enough, but somehow they don't say much. Firenzo thinks that's the trouble with her singing. Good voice, you know, but it doesn't speak. Young, I suppose! That's it; eh?" "Twenty years old, you say? Yes, I should call that young! And the other one? Tell me about her." "Well, Polly hasn't much ambition. Nice contralto voice, not much cultivated.
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