“Choral singing!” she said, with immense disgust.
“Yes, indeed. It does make one feel one of a crowd. I’ve often wondered, in my own case, if I shouldn’t have done better to have gone on the stage.”
She looked him over. “Well,” she said, “I suppose you weren’t always fat. It’s too late now.”
Mr. Chown swallowed hard. “Yes, for me,” he said. “Not for you. Would you care to go on the stage if the chance came?”
“Would a duck swim?”
Ducks, he thought, more often drowned than swam on the stage; that was why there was always so much room at the top. “It’s very hard work,” he said.
“I’m not afraid of work,” she said, and then remembered her grievance, “if I can see it leading anywhere. Work that only leads to singing with the crowd isn’t funny.”
“Oh, I can do better than that for you.”
“You can? You?”
“If you will work. If, for instance, you will get rid of your Lancashire accent.”