When the song ended, Bert turned to Phil and asked him if he liked music. Phil answered that he loved it and added more as if he were thinking aloud than talking, that it was “the finest thing on earth.”
The boys sat up and stared. There was a moment of surprised silence and then a chorus of voices:
“Then you can sing?”
“We never dreamed you could.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Why wouldn’t you sing for us?”
“Because,” said Phil, who had decided to tell them the real reason at last, “because all you big fellows thought that just because I was small, I couldn’t do anything worth while, and I was sore.”
The fellows expressed their regret and then in responses to a few kindly questions put by Mr. Hollis, they learned that Shorty’s ambition was to obtain a thorough musical education. They learned too that for two years past he had been the soloist in the boy choir of one of the prominent churches in New York. He had joined the boy choir because there he could gain, without cost, a knowledge of sight reading and voice control.
Bert’s “Won’t you sing something for us, Phil?” was not to be resisted and after a moment’s thought his clear notes rose in a burst of melody:
“Cast thy bread upon the waters”——