“Who are you referring to, Tubby?” asked Sim, who sat next the fat scout.
“Why, just turn your head this way, and glance over yonder near the door among the latecomers. Strike you that you know anybody in that bunch?” chuckled Tubby.
“Say, it is Peleg, after all!” admitted Sim. “I was dead sure the circus would do for him, and here he bobs up at the concert. Do you suppose it’s because we just happened to be coming here, and he knew it, Ralph?”
Ralph and Rob had discovered the farm boy by then.
“Oh! I don’t know about that,” said the former, looking both surprised and puzzled. “I believe I’ve heard Peleg say more than once he liked music, and singing especially. That was when he told me one of his little sisters could warble like a bird, and some day she might show people the Pinders weren’t such good-for-nothing trash, after all. That’s what has been worrying Peleg all along, the way folks looked down on his father and the children after the mother died, years ago.”
“Well, he looks as if he was glad to even find standing room tonight,” suggested Andy. “You can see a regular grin on his face away from over here. Peleg certainly seems happier than I’ve known him to be since we first met him. It doesn’t require much to please some fellows, I take it.”
Rob looked at Ralph, and found the other observing him intently. Both of them were wondering whether the visit Peleg had made to the old curio dealer could account for that broad smile on his face. Indeed, an observer, if he had been a boy, would have said that Peleg every once in so often looked as though he wanted to “shake hands with himself,” he felt so happy.
The announcement that the entertainment was about to commence drew the attention of the five lads from Peleg Pinder. When Tubby happened to glance in that quarter again later on, he could not place the other, for, the rear of the hall being densely packed with the late-comers, it was difficult to make out any individual person.
There were some ordinary numbers at first, a fair quartette that provoked a certain amount of applause, then a banjo solo that quite excited Tubby, who secretly aspired to some day to play such a splendid instrument.
After that some other exercises came along, but it was evident that the audience as a whole was waiting for the crowning event of the evening.