“You’ll have to do it yourself, Captain Patch,” said Claire. “How about the Hessian boots?”
“We thought of Martyn. And someone will be wanted to sing the song itself, as a kind of prologue, before the curtain goes up,” said Mrs. Fazackerly.
I remember that she looked as much pleased and excited over their plans as a child over a party.
“You see, that song is meant to be a sort of recurring motif throughout the whole show,” Bill said. “When we’re at rather a loose end, someone can play the refrain or sing it, and it will buck things up at once. It’s extraordinary how pleased an audience always is with anything that’s repeated often enough. They know where they are, I suppose, when they recognize an old friend. And at the end, we can all stand in a row across the stage and sing the chorus together. You know the kind of thing—just to bring down the curtain.”
He looked just as much pleased and excited as Nancy Fazackerly did. They were like two very nice children.
“It sounds all right,” I said. “I take it that we really want to do the acting among ourselves, as much as possible, and entertain the rest of the people and then all wind up with a dance.”
“Exactly,” said Claire.
“The only outside talent, as far as one can see at present, will be Mrs. Harter,” said Bill Patch—and he was genuinely quite unconcerned about it, too.
But I saw that Nancy Fazackerly knew well enough that Claire wasn’t going to stand for that.
“Mrs. Harter?”