"If you are going to get poetical, George," I said, "I would sooner you sang. Here you are."
I reached out an arm into the tent, and tossed him across the somewhat battered banjo which was lying on his bed. He caught it neatly with his left hand.
"I believe you would play cricket with a Stradivarius," he said reproachfully. "What shall I sing?"
"Anything short."
"I shall sing something sad," he went on, disregarding my interruption. "I always feel very wistful after tea. Besides, I am in love with the bronze-haired girl at Otter's Holt, and perhaps she will hear me and think that I am unhappy."
"She is much more likely to think that I am," said I. "Fire ahead."
He twanged two or three experimental chords, tightened a couple of pegs, and then settling down again in his basket-chair, launched out pathetically into the time-honoured ballad of "London Bridge":
Hurry along, sorrow and song,
All is vanity 'neath the sun;
Velvet and rags, so the world wags,
Until the river no more shall run.
"I shall not applaud you," I said, when he had finished. "You might mistake courtesy for an encore."
"I wonder if the bronze-haired girl heard me?" murmured George, laying down the banjo.