she warbled,
"The perry mipes——"
There seemed to be something wrong with the words, but she could not get them right
"Yet, the perry perry mipes of Pan!"
"Gracious goodness," murmured the husky Miss Snelgrove to Mrs. Whitaker, who sat near her, "what a strident voice!"
"Yes," assented Mrs. Whitaker. "And what are the 'perrimipes,' I wonder?"
There was no denying it. The concert was a fiasco. Owing to the execrable behaviour of the refugees and the contagion of their senseless laughter, a kind of hysteria gained the hall and half the audience was soon in a condition of brainless and uncontrollable hilarity.
Every new number was greeted with suffocated giggles, sometimes even with screams of laughter from the younger portion of the audience.
The curate—who had himself been found holding both his sides in one of the empty schoolrooms—made a caustic speech at the close of the performance about "our well-meant efforts, our perchance too modest talents," having appealed mainly to the risible faculties of their foreign guests, and he had pleasure in stating that the sum collected was eighteen pounds seven shillings and sixpence.