“'Sally in Our Alley,'” I replied.
“What are you?” interrupted Mr. Hodgson. He had never once looked at me, and did not now.
“A tenor,” I replied. “Not a full tenor,” I added, remembering the O'Kelly's instructions.
“Utterly impossible to fill a tenor,” remarked the restless-eyed gentleman, looking at me and speaking to the worried-looking gentleman. “Ever tried?”
Everybody laughed, with the exception of the melancholy gentleman at the piano, Mr. Hodgson throwing in his contribution without raising his eyes from his letters. Throughout the proceedings the restless-eyed gentleman continued to make humorous observations of this nature, at which everybody laughed, excepting always the melancholy pianist—a short, sharp, mechanical laugh, devoid of the least suggestion of amusement. The restless-eyed gentleman, it appeared, was the leading low comedian of the theatre.
“Go on,” said the melancholy gentleman, and commenced the accompaniment.
“Tell me when he's going to begin,” remarked Mr. Hodgson at the conclusion of the first verse.
“He has a fair voice,” said my accompanist. “He's evidently nervous.”
“There is a prejudice throughout theatrical audiences,” observed Mr. Hodgson, “in favour of a voice they can hear. That is all I am trying to impress upon him.”
The second verse, so I imagined, I sang in the voice of a trumpet. The burly gentleman—the translator of the French libretto, as he turned out to be; the author of the English version, as he preferred to be called—acknowledged to having distinctly detected a sound. The restless-eyed comedian suggested an announcement from the stage requesting strict silence during my part of the performance.