"Plenty of room in front!" Robin called out.
"All serene!" somebody answered. "Don't care to be too near, thanks: rather afraid of earache."
"Besides," said another wag, "some faces, seen close, are a strain."
"Heard say that the opening chorus is a rattling good imitation of a cat-fight in the shrubbery," remarked a third boy. "That's why I came early."
Observations such as these, from an audience far scantier than he had expected, would have depressed any other stage-manager than Robin. But nothing, it seemed, could quench the sunshine in the heart of the Merry Men's leader.
"If, after the show, any of you gentlemen are dissatisfied, you shall have back whatever money you paid at the door," he told them, airily.
Ten seconds later he was on the stage, with the curtain up and the performance in full swing.
"Hail, ye Merry Men" was not, perhaps, an operatic number, yet it had plenty of "kick" in it and was sung to a tune everybody knew. Moreover, through it all there rang the rich alto of Allan a Dale, whose voice would have redeemed any chorus from the commonplace. It bore down the derisive laughter of the critics in the audience, and won from some of the quieter ones a fair round of hand-clapping.
Sung with an enthusiasm that carried it to almost every part of the school, it served also as an advertisement, reminding the boys that something was afoot. Chessmen were bundled into boxes, darts were left sticking in boards, and there was a fairly general exodus from the play-room to the play-house. Robin, peeping through the side-curtains during Allan a Dale's solo (which, unluckily, was somewhat marred by the tramping of feet), observed with pride that the Captain of Foxenby had entered with the Prefect of Rooke's House, closely followed by Luke Harwood, Broome, and other Sixth Form boys of both houses.
All chose seats as far back as they could get, but most of them were in time to applaud Allan a Dale, who, under less disturbing conditions, would doubtless have taken an encore.