"I only say if you do, dear," Clara said smoothly.
"Then I will!" Albert announced the great decision. "Just for the fun of the thing, I will. Thank ye, Mrs. Cheswardine."
He glanced at Mrs. Cheswardine as a knight at his unattainable mistress. Indeed the decision had in it something of the chivalrous; the attention of slim provocative Vera, costliest and most fashionably dressed woman in Bursley, had stirred his fancy to wander far beyond its usual limits.
"Albert! Well, I never!" exclaimed Mrs. Hamps.
"You don't mind, do you Auntie?" said Albert jovially, standing over her.
"Not if it's not gambling," said Mrs. Hamps stoutly. "And I hope it isn't. And it would be very nice for Clara, I'm sure, if you won."
"Hurrah for Mrs. Hamps!" Johnnie Orgreave almost yelled.
At the same moment, Janet Orgreave, swinging round on the music-stool, lifted the lid of the piano, and, still with her soft, angelic smile, played loudly and dashingly the barbaric, Bacchic, orgiastic melody which had just recently inflamed England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and the Five Towns--the air which was unlike anything ever heard before by British ears, and which meant nothing whatever that could be avowed, the air which heralded social revolutions and inaugurated a new epoch. And as the ringed fingers of the quiet, fading spinster struck out the shocking melody, Vera Cheswardine and one or two others who had been to London and there seen the great legendary figure, Lottie Collins, hummed more or less brazenly the syllables heavy with mysterious significance:
"Tarara-boom-deay!
Tarara-boom-deay!
Tarara-boom-deay!
Tarara-boom-deay!"
Upon this entered Mr. Peartree, like a figure of retribution, and silence fell.