Bobby was beaming down at him placidly, and Thayer's face lighted at the unexpected sight of his friend. Bobby nodded occasionally, to mark his approval of the music; then, at the end of Thayer's first solo, he laid his score on the gallery rail and led off a volley of applause which, echoing back from the chorus, roused Bobby to such a pitch of enthusiasm that he knocked the score off the rail and sent it tumbling down among the rear ranks of the altos.
"Why the unmentionable mischief do you waste your energies, singing like that at a rehearsal?" he demanded abruptly of Thayer, as he joined him on the stairs.
"Where the unmentionable mischief did you come from?" Thayer responded, seizing Bobby's hand in his own firm clasp.
"New York. Just came up, this morning. I'm doing the concert, to-night."
"Oh! I was under the impression that I was going to do a part of it, myself."
"Musically. I represent the power of the Press."
"As critic?"
"Certainly."
"How long since?"
"To-day. The regular critic is busy with a domestic funeral, his grandmother, or step-mother, or something, and it lay between the devil and me to take his place. Strange to say, the Chief chose me; but he was morose enough to say the old lady shouldn't have died, just when all the other papers in town were sending up their best critics."