Wiping her hands on her apron, Mrs. Ogden assured the choirmaster that if Edgar wasn’t earning his wages she’d attend to that part of it, all right. So intent was her expression that he felt obliged to put in a plea for gentleness, on the ground that such a delicate mechanism as the human throat could not be too carefully treated. Mrs. Ogden assured him that she was not in the habit of applying her disciplinary measures to the throat, and the audience was at an end. The day happened to be Saturday, and at the evening rehearsal it seemed to the choirmaster that things had never gone so smoothly. After all, he thought, it needed a mother to reason with the boys—he had made several calls of the same nature that week—a mother knew best how to influence them. And he was abundantly justified in his conclusions.
“A mild and stolid youth.”
On Sunday afternoon Edgar marched into the church, impassive and uninteresting to the outward vision, with Tim beside him, rapt and effective. Edgar stared vacantly into space, his feet marked the time at the proper distance from the crucifer, a mild and stolid youth, who could never understand why it was that just as he turned the corner and began to climb the steps to the choir-stalls his cassock should suddenly tighten below the knees and almost throw him. Edgar’s partner in the column could have informed him, but prudence rendered him uncommunicative.
“The brightest hopes we cherish here,
How fast they tire and faint!”
Edgar’s brows met, he took a longer stride in reaching for his B flat, and the crucifer grasped his pole nervously and broke step a moment—his cassock had caught again.
“How many a spot defiles the robe
That wraps an earthly saint!”
“He sings like an angel,” the rector mused. “How clumsy that Waters boy is!”