Honey! Lift your pretty head—
Honey, there’ll be dancin’ in the sky!”
He not only sang, he danced, danced like a leaf, like a feather, an indiarubber ball,—danced as even Billy-boy had never danced! And from that moment his clerical reputation was gone for ever.
Larrupper dropped into a chair beside Callander, and let out a volley of demand, ejaculation and applause.
“Wish I’d been on the spot!” he muttered worriedly, when the other had briefly put him in possession of the facts. “I’d have taught Mr. Billy-boy an interestin’ sing-song with a dog-whip! But I was busy crawlin’ behind settles an’ peerin’ into parlours, an’ gettin’ myself disliked somethin’ amazin’, lookin’ for the drunken squawker. I’ll have some charmin’ moments alone with him, by an’ by! But can’t old Grant just sing an’ twiddle that banjo! Who’d have thought he’d got it in him? You don’t look a bit like shoutin’, old man. One might think you were used to it!”
“So I am,” Callander answered calmly. “I knew Grant intimately before he was ordained. He was the crack entertainer of our particular neighbourhood,—always figuring on somebody’s charitable platform. I’ve heard him sing ‘Honey’ scores of times,—seen him as Pavlova, too, in frills. He can play anything and sing anything that he’s once heard. Mean to say you folks didn’t know? You’re mighty slow at picking up facts! He’s as clever as they’re made, though he’s a little bit out of practice—for him. Been starving himself for his thankless village, I expect, poor little chap! I wonder what the Bishop will say when this gets round to him?”
But Grant had left the Bishop in the green-room with Billy-boy and his parson’s clothes, and had sunk every other consideration before the success of Verity’s concert. And a success he made it indeed! Never deliberately asserting himself, he was yet definitely behind each performance, blending, guiding, smoothing over awkward places; and once, when an accompaniment disappeared, he sat down at the piano and played it by ear. At the end, dropping his banjo, he sang his mother’s cradle-song, and when he had persistently refused demands for an encore, some enterprising soul requested a speech. The cry was taken up at once, and after a moment’s hesitation he got up and came back to the footlights.
“I hope to Heaven he’s not goin’ to say anythin’ about Billy!” Larrupper agitated, nearly pushing Callander off his chair. “So upsettin’ for Verity, don’t you know? Hadn’t I better stop him jawin’ by callin’ three cheers?”
“Don’t you worry!” Callander said tranquilly, levering him gently back into his own seat. “Grant knows the right thing to do as well as anybody. He wasn’t born a parson. And your Miss Verity may be jolly thankful she had him at her back!”
Grant spoke in a rather low tone, looking pale against the painted faces round him, and also rather exhausted. He was out of practice, as Callander had said, and a young, unmarried parson has the poor very much always with him, as well as (most often) a more or less inadequate housekeeper.