So sang Millie Brewster in her faint, pleasant soprano, while O’Leary, at the piano, nodded encouragement, and interpolated brilliant roulades into the accompaniment. The skylight was open in deference to the first warmth of the spring, as March went out like a lamb. Tootles, in overalls, so splashed with variegated tints that they might have passed for an impressionistic landscape, was giving the last tender touches to the completed canvas of the Well-dressed Man Contemplated By The Ages. Schneibel, who had stolen up between appointments, in his white dentist’s coat, was dividing his admiration between the contemplation of Tootles’ masterpiece and that critical attention which one great singer bestows upon the performance of another. Mr. Pomello, his high hat pushed back from his forehead, his hands on his cane, was sitting in judgment, with a view to giving Millie a trial performance at the Gloria, the moving-picture theater below, where King O’Leary thundered nightly on the piano. Flick, who had organized the demonstration with the express intention of capturing Mr. Pomello, sat well forward, nodding his head in a romantic, melancholy way, occasionally clearing his throat to convey emotion repressed with difficulty.
“Bravo!” said Tootles loudly, when the lass of bonnie Dundee had been laid away in true ballad form.
“You had me going,” said Flick, rubbing his eyes industriously, while King O’Leary patted the frightened girl on the back in rough encouragement.
“How about it, Pomello?” he said, wheeling on his stool. “That ought to take the house by storm.”
At this moment, a pounding was heard on the wall, followed by several “Bravas!” in Dangerfield’s deep voice.
“I like that better than the first thing she sang,” said Pomello; “got more stuff to it.”
“Sure—the first was just fireworks—grand-opera stuff—opens up the voice,” said O’Leary.
“Well, I don’t know anything about singing, but I know what I like,” said Pomello, who, by this phrase, doubly barred himself from the sphere of the higher criticism. “Sing something more, something sentimental.”
“What would you like?” said Millie.