"If you will pass me my guitar," said George, "I will sing to you."
"I would rather you washed up," I replied. "It would be more of a
novelty."
"For one who professes to be an artist," returned George, with
unruffled serenity, "you are painfully lacking in sensibility. A man
who can speak of washing up ten minutes after tea on a golden June
evening----"
"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.
"Unless she is deaf," I pointed out, "she could scarcely have avoided
it. She probably thinks we are a couple of music-hall comedians."
"Perhaps I had better call to-morrow and apologize," said George
thoughtfully.