Lovell's was the one execrable voice among the Wallencampers—if anything so weak could be designated by so strong a term—and his manner of keeping time with his head was clock-like in its regularity and painfully arduous; yet, out of that pristine naughtiness which found a hiding-place in the hearts of the Wallencamp youth, Lovell was frequently encouraged to come to the front during their musicals, and if not actually beguiled into executing a solo, was generously applauded in the performance of minor parts. There was comfort, however, in the reflection that if Lovell had indeed possessed the tuneful gift of a Heaven-elected artist, he could not have been so supremely confident of the merit of his own performances, nor could his mother have been more delighted at their brilliancy. She sat with hands clasped in her lap and gazed at her manly offspring.
"Oh, I do think it's so beautiful!" she murmured occasionally to me, aside. "Oh, yes, ain't it beautiful?"
Once, she remarked in greater confidence; "Oh, he's dreadful wild!"
"Lovell?" I inquired, with impulsive incredulity.
"Oh, dreadful!" she continued. "I don't know what he'd ben if we hadn't always restrained him. But somehow, I think there's something dreadful bewitchin' about such folks. Don't yew?"
"Very," I answered with vague, though ardent sympathy.
"Oh, dreadful!" she responded.
Meanwhile the perspiration stood out on Lovell's grave countenance, and his head, like a laborious sledge-hammer, was swaying mechanically backward and forward.
"Sing bass, now, Lovell," said Mrs. Barlow; and the expression of awed delight and expectancy on her face, as she uttered these words, was a rebuke to all cynics and unbelievers of any sort whatever.
"Yes'm, so I will, certainly," said Lovell; "so I will, and if I hadn't got such a cold, I'd come down heavy on it too."