"What does she mean?" demanded the vicar in astonishment.
"Something very odd," said Miss Cassy, shaking her girlish head. "Yes, quite like a play. The School for what's-it's-name. Sheridan, you know--quite lovely."
And now Reginald began to sing the quaint old song "Phyllida flouts me," while Cecilia, who knew the music off by heart, played the accompaniment. The night was beginning to close in, and the room was full of shadows, lighted in a fantastic manner by the red glare of the fire, which flashed on the tarnished gilded frames of the pictures and the sombre faces looking from the walls. Beaumont, leaning his elbow on the mantelpiece, listened quietly, while opposite to him the vicar, ensconced in a great arm-chair, crossed his legs and kept time to the music with his spectacles.
So gay and charming the old song sounded. Nothing of the sickly sentimentality of the modern drawing-room ballad--nothing of the florid passion of the Italian school--but all fresh and wholesome, like a gentle wind blowing freely over an English meadow, white with daisies. Reginald sang the complaint of the unhappy lover charmingly, and ended amid a subdued murmur of satisfaction, even Mrs. Larcher being pleased.
"So simple," she said, nodding her head. "Quite soothing, like a cradle. Ah, there are no songs now-a-days like the old ones."
"My dear, we are past the age of Corydon and Chloe," replied the vicar. "Virgil and Horace would find no Arcady to sing about now."
"Well, I don't suppose that Imperial Rome was more Arcadian than London," said Beaumont, lazily, "but I'm afraid we've lost the charm of simplicity."
"Ah, you've never heard 'Lady Bell,'" said Dick wisely.
"No. I must confess my ignorance," replied the artist. "Who or what is Lady Bell?"
"It's a song--simplicity, if you like. Reggy found it among some old music at the vicarage."