“Why, you’d better fall in too with the clar’net, Mr Snell,” suggested Mr Dimbleby. “That’d make a fine thing of it with four instruments.”
Joshua shook his head solemnly.
“Mine’s a solo,” he said. “A sacred one: ‘Sound the loud timbrel o’er Egypt’s dark sea.’ That’ll give a variety.”
“Mr Buckle’s going to recite a beautiful thing,” put in Bella: “‘The Dream of Eugene Aram’. He’s been practising it ever so long. He’s going to do it with action.”
“I don’t know as I can make much of that reciting,” said Joshua doubtfully. “Now a good tune, or a song, or a bit of reading, I can take hold of and carry along, but it’s poor sport to see a man twist hisself, and make mouths, and point about at nothing at all. I remember the first time the curate did it. He stares straight at me for a second, and then he shakes his fist and shouts out suddenly: ‘Wretch!’ or ‘Villain!’ or summat of that sort. I was so taken aback I nearly got up and went out. Downright uncomfortable I was.”
“It’s all the fashion now. But of course,” said Bella disdainfully, “it isn’t everybody as is used to it. I’m sure it’s beautiful to hear Charlie! It makes your blood run cold. There’s a part where he has to speak it in a sort of a hissing whisper. He’s afraid the back seats won’t hear.”
“And a good thing for ’em,” muttered Joshua. “It’s bad enough to see a man make a fool of hisself without having to hear him as well.”
“But after all,” continued Bella, without noticing this remark, “it’s only the gentry as matter much, and they’ll be in the two front rows. Mrs Leigh’s going to bring some friends.”
“And what’s Lilac White going to do?” said Joshua, turning round with sudden sharpness. “She used to sing the prettiest of ’em all at school.”
“Oh, I dare say she’ll sing in the part songs with the other children,” said Bella carelessly. “They haven’t asked her for a solo.”