"Yes. I've soong. But thot was in t' owd schoolmaaster's time. Yo' wouldn't care to hear my singin' now. I've got out of the way of it, like."
"You haven't, Mr. Greatorex. I've heard you. You've got a magnificent voice. There isn't one like it in the choir."
"Ay, there's not mooch wrong with my voice, I rackon. But it's like this, look yo. I joost soong fer t' schoolmaaster. He was a friend—a personal friend of mine. And he's gone. And I'm sure I doan' knaw—"
"I know, Mr. Greatorex. I know exactly how you feel about it. You sang to please your friend. He's gone and you don't like the idea of singing for anybody else—for a set of people you don't know."
She had said it. It was the naked truth and he wasn't going to deny it.
She went on. "We're strangers and perhaps you don't like us very much, and you feel that singing for us would be like singing the Lord's song in a strange country; you feel as if it would be profanation—a kind of disloyalty."
"Thot's it. Thot's it." Never had he been so well interpreted.
"It's that—and it's because you miss him so awfully."
"Wall—" He seemed inclined, in sheer honesty, to deprecate the extreme and passionate emotion she suggested. I would n' saay—O' course, I sort o' miss him. I caann't afford to lose a friend—I 'aven't so many of 'em."
"I know. It's the waters of Babylon, and you're hanging up your voice in the willow tree." She could be gay and fluent enough with Greatorex, who was nothing to her. "But it's an awful pity. A willow tree can't do anything with a big barytone voice hung up in it."