“Well, Hughie,” said his mother, quietly, “I don't think it is necessary to shout even such pleasant information as that. Now go to your singing, and I shall listen.”
She lay back in the big chair, looking so pale and weary that Harry hardly believed it was the same woman that had just been keeping a hundred and fifty people keenly alert for an hour and a half, and leading them with such intellectual and emotional power.
“That class is too hard for you, auntie,” he said. “If I were your husband I would not let you keep it on.”
“But you see my husband is not here. He is twelve miles away.”
“Then I would lock you up, or take you with me.”
“Oh!” cried Hughie, “I would much rather teach the Bible class than listen to another sermon.”
“Something in that,” said his cousin, “especially if I were the preacher, eh?” at which they all laughed.
It was a happy hour for Ranald. He had been too shy to join the singing school, and had never heard any part singing till he began to attend the Bible class. There he made the delightful discovery that, without any instruction, he could join in the bass, and had made, also, the further discovery that his voice, which he had thought rough and coarse, and for a year past, worse than ever, could reach to extraordinary depths. One Sabbath evening, it chanced that John “Aleck,” who always had an ear open for a good voice, heard him rolling out his deep bass, and seizing him on the spot, had made him promise to join the singing school. There he discovered a talent and developed a taste for singing that delighted his leader's heart, and opened out to himself a new world. The piano, too, was a new and rare treat to Ranald. In all the country there was no other, and even in the manse it was seldom heard, for Mrs. Murray found little time, amid the multitude of household and congregational duties, to keep up her piano practice. That part of her life, with others of like kind, she had been forced to lose.
But since Maimie's coming, the piano had been in daily use, and even on the Sabbath days, though not without danger to the sensibilities of the neighbors, she had used it to accompany the hymns with which the day always closed.
“Let us have the parts,” cried Hughie. “Maimie and I will take the air, and Ranald will take the bass. Cousin Harry, can you sing?”