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Rh sobs tearing her slender form, her thin shoulders heaving.

Jane flew to her, with a distressed glance over toward Mary.

“Little girl-mother, don’t mind, please don’t mind!” Jane begged, on her knees before her mother, gathering her shaking little body into her firm young clasp. “I’ll never sing a note unless you want me to; truly I won’t! And don’t you see your life isn’t over and done with if I can do this? That’s nonsense, of course; I mean your life being over when you seem younger than we girls! What I meant was about the singing. If I could sing, if I have a voice, it came from you, and when I sang it would be you singing still, through me. It would be beautiful, I think, if it were so, because then you would go singing on and on, when you thought you’d never sing again! If I sang you could say: there’s my dear voice that I loved so and never expected to hear again! Jane’s taken it out to exercise it for me! And when you wanted to sing, you could say: Jane, use my voice for me; I want to sing ‘Good-bye, Sweet Day,’ or whatever you would sing that special minute. Couldn’t you feel that way about it? It would be so lovely!