The excitement went on increasing. To use Lance's expression, the tickets went off like wild-fire; Marilda took a large allowance for her servants and dependants.

The type of the programmes was all set up, and Lance had proudly carried the proof round the house, when a note arrived from Edgar.

'Prebels consent to come and give three National Magyar airs, expenses being paid. Engage rooms for them at the F.A. I trust this is in time to draw. I shall come down with them.'

T.E.U.

Here were the stars, after all! Lance crushed up his proof and played at ball with it in his ecstasy; and Felix—for all the trouble it gave him—was carried along and not much less delighted, as he sent Clement up to Mr. Flowerdew with the intelligence.

The brother and sister M. Stanislas and Mlle. Zoraya Prebel were not exactly in the first ranks of public singers, but were rated highly, and their fame, when making the round of the provinces with a company who performed varieties of characteristic national music, had been quite enough to fire the souls of Bexley with ardour; nor did Felix murmur, although he had to stay away from the final choral society's rehearsal to provide for the programmes and hand-bills, without which the attraction of Mlle. Zoraya would remain unknown to the public. Time to put it into the Pursuivant would have made all the difference!

But on that last supreme day, the excitement was such, that anybody was willing to do anything. Felix could do little but explain to people where their seats would be on the map of the town hall spread on the counter, and answer their questions about the Zoraya; Wilmet was over head and ears on her preparations for her entertainment, and would have been unable to get any help in laying out her table but Cherry's if Marilda had not come in to see what was going on, thrown herself into the business with zeal and promptitude, sent back to Centry for a supply of flowers, knives and forks, and done the work of half a dozen parlour-maids. Stella was obediently keeping Theodore out of mischief; and the other two girls were, with Bill Harewood, assisting a select party in decorating the town hall with evergreens; and Clement, who had to his dismay found a whole part made over to him by a young Bruce, who had an inopportune cold, was practising hard at the old piano (which, by-the-by, Lance had learned to tune); Mr. Flowerdew and the manager were catching the doubtful and putting them through their performances; and little Lightfoot was only preserved by his natural stolidity from utter distraction among the hundred different ways he was ordered at once. As for Lance, he tried to help every one, was too excited to keep at anything, and was usually scolded off from whatever he attempted till at last he shut himself up in the barrack with his violin, and practised till he was so desperate at the sense of his failures, that when Bill Harewood came in search of him, he was, as he mildly expressed it, hesitating whether to hang himself like Dirk Hatteraick on the beam.

'Well, come down, here's Miles as savage as a bear with a sore head—vows that he was very near turning back again when he saw your rose-coloured placard of the Zoraya at the station.'

'If he's sulky, that is a go!' exclaimed Lance, with a look of consternation, utterly overpowering his stage fright. 'Do you remember his putting us all out at the Deanery, because Miss Evans affronted him?'

'Well do I remember it! He boxed my ears for it so that they sung for a week!'

And the two ex-choristers went down, feeling much as when an anthem had gone wrong. The room was pretty well filled with their old comrades, but Lance only went from one to the other quietly shaking hands, and quaking for the future as he heard the organist thundering away to Wilmet and Cherry.