THE SINGER AND THE SONG
“I wonder when school will close,” remarked Harry Harding to Teddy
Burke one morning in late November. It was now a little more than a
month since the two chums had enlisted under the banner of Martin
Brothers, and they had become thoroughly familiar with the routine of
store life.
“After Thanksgiving, I guess,” returned Teddy. It was a cold,
blustering morning, but the lads swung down the street apparently
unmindful of the officious wind which whisked pedestrians’ hats from
their heads and blew the red into their cheeks and noses.
“Won’t it be glorious to have a whole day off?” glowed Harry.
“Will it? Well, I guess maybe,” rejoined Teddy, his small face animated
with the prospect of the coming holiday. “What are you going to do?”
“Oh, my mother and I are going to a restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner
and then I’m going to take her to The Pickford, that new motion
picture house we pass every day. Oh, yes, we are going to church in the
morning. Mother says everyone ought to go to church on Thanksgiving
Day, even if one never goes any other time, to give thanks for one’s
blessings.”
“I never go to church,” stated Teddy, cheerfully unashamed. “My mother
used to take me, but I behaved so bad she quit. I go to Sunday School,
but not every Sunday.”
“What did you ever do in church that was so very terrible?” asked
Harry, smiling.
“Oh, a lot of things. Once I sang a whole line of a hymn after
everybody else got through singing, and I fell out of our pew into the
aisle and made all the folks laugh. I tied two girls’ sashes together
once in Sunday School. They sat right in front of me and the ends of
their ribbons hung down. Maybe they weren’t wild when they started
to go home in different directions. Once I lost my nickel for the
collection plate, so I put a milk bottle check on the plate instead. It
looked just like a quarter, but the man who passed the plate was pretty
mad about it. He told my mother afterwards, and she said I’d better
stay home, if I couldn’t behave better than that. So I stayed home. I
guess that was the best place for me.”
“I always go to the church that Father used to go to with Mother.
Sometimes I get tired before it’s out, but sometimes I hear really
interesting things,” said Harry. He was still smiling over Teddy’s
list of iniquities.
“I don’t mind the singing. It’s the sermons that make me sleepy. I love
to sing.” Teddy’s eyes glowed. “I think it’s fine that we have one
morning a week for singing. My mother can play the piano, and sing,
too. Sometimes she lets me sing with her. I know a lot of songs.”
“I can’t sing very much,” confessed Harry, “but I love to hear singing.”
“I like that Miss Verne, who plays the piano for us at school. She’s so
small and pretty. She looks like a little girl dressed up in a grown
woman’s clothes. Did you hear Miss Leonard tell three of the boys last
Monday that Miss Verne wanted them to sing for her after school?”
“Yes,” nodded Harry. “I heard her tell them. Elmer Barry told me that
there is to be a Christmas play, or something, and these boys are going
to sing.”
“I wish I was going to be in it,” sighed Teddy wistfully. “I wouldn’t
be afraid to sing in public. My mother says I have a good voice.”
“Maybe Miss Verne will ask you to be in the entertainment,” suggested
Harry kindly, noting Teddy’s wistful look.
“How can she when she doesn’t even know I can sing? I’m not going
to tell her, either. She’d think I was crazy about myself. Oh, I
guess I’ll live if I don’t have a chance to show off,” ended Teddy
philosophically.
Nevertheless, that morning as Company A filed into the room used as
a gymnasium and seated themselves in the rows of chairs arranged for
them, Teddy could not help cherishing a faint hope that Miss Verne
would notice him and ask him to sing in the Christmas entertainment.
There was small chance of that, he reflected, for this was to be their
last morning in school until after the holiday rush was over. School
closed that Saturday, not to open again until after New Year’s.
“Now, boys,” began Miss Verne, after Company A had sung several songs
of her suggesting, “I am going to teach you such a pretty, new song
this morning. You’ll like it, I’m sure. Listen while I play and sing
the first verse for you.” After a rollicking introduction on the piano,
she began a delightful little popular song that had just recently
been published and was fast gaining popularity. Although Miss Verne
frequently chose popular music for the boys to sing, she was extremely
careful in her choice of songs, and never presented any which could be
classed as vulgar or over-sentimental.
She played and sang the verse to the boys three times, then said
brightly, “Now, boys, you try it.”
With the quick ear for music possessed by the majority of children, the
boys took up the first two or three lines of the song at once. They
wavered on the fourth line, and at the fifth there was only one boy
singing in perfect time with the accompaniment. But that boy was well
worth listening to. His clear, soprano voice sang on, growing stronger
and surer with every breath. The song ended with a gay little run up to
a fairly high note. The boy took the run exquisitely, holding that note
for an instant. Miss Verne’s hands dropped from the piano. “Come up
here,” she commanded, beckoning to the boy who had sung so sweetly.
With his freckled face only a shade paler than his hair, Teddy Burke
reluctantly ascended the platform. In spite of his boastful denial
that he wouldn’t be afraid to sing in public, Teddy was decidedly
embarrassed. He had not meant to sing a solo. As it happened, the song
was one which he had heard his mother practising for the past week to
sing at a club entertainment. It had appealed to Teddy from the moment
he had first heard it, and happy in the love of letting out his voice
in sweet sounds he had sung on, wholly unconscious of singing alone,
until the end of the song. The dead silence which followed it, and Miss
Verne’s command to come to the piano had awakened him to what he had
done.
“What’s your name?” asked the pretty little woman abruptly.
“Teddy--Theodore Burke, ma’am.”
“Well, Teddy, who taught you to sing?”
“No one--I mean--I hear my mother sing and I sing, too,” stammered
Teddy.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you that you have a beautiful voice?”
Teddy’s face blazed with fresh embarrassment at the complimentary
grilling he was undergoing. He hung his head and made no reply.
“Well, if no one else ever told you, I am going to tell you now,” Miss
Verne said in brisk fashion. “You are just the boy I am looking for to
sing the leading part in the Christmas musical play we are getting up.
Would you like to sing in it?”
“Yes, ma’am. I mean, no, ma’am. I don’t--know--whether I would like it
or not,” floundered Teddy.
“Of course you would. The only part you won’t like is rehearsing after
the store closes.”
“I don’t mind _that_,” admitted the boy.
“All right. Take your seat. I’ll talk with you about it after singing
is over. Miss Leonard, may I keep this boy here for a moment after the
others are gone?”
Miss Leonard bowed a smiling assent. She was very proud to think that
one of her boys was to be honored.
“Now, boys,” she returned to her class again. “Let’s try our song once
more.”
Teddy Burke finished the rest of the singing period in a delightful
daze. Once he gave his hand a wicked little pinch to see if he were
really awake. He pinched himself hard enough to leave an angry red
spot, so he ruefully concluded that he was not dreaming. Every now and
then he glanced shyly at Harry, who beamed at him in a way that left no
doubt in Teddy’s mind of Harry’s pleasure in his good fortune.
Harry was unselfishly glad that his friend was to have the longed-for
chance to sing, particularly so since he had heard the boy’s sweet
voice. He waited anxiously about for a moment after school was
over, thinking perhaps Miss Verne would take time merely to make an
appointment with his chum after the store closed.
“Don’t loiter here, Harry,” reproved Miss Leonard rather coldly.
Although the boy was the soul of good behavior in school, she did not
trust him. The growing number of demerits on his card influenced her
against him, and instead of inquiring into matters, she placed a secret
ban of disapproval upon him and privately characterized him as one of
those boys who were well-behaved when watched, and then only. Usually
clever in her reading of boy character, she was wholly in error as far
as Harry was concerned, an error which time alone could rectify.
Harry glanced wistfully toward the gymnasium, then he went sadly
downstairs. Miss Leonard did not like him. She did not trust him. She
believed the story of his report card. She would never know that he
had not deserved all those demerits, for he could never tell her. How
beautifully everything was going for Teddy. He wondered what would have
happened to Teddy, had their positions been reversed. Suppose Teddy had
been placed at the exchange desk, while he, Harry, had taken Teddy’s
place in the house furnishings. Teddy was such a droll little boy.
Perhaps Mr. Barton would have liked him. Then he remembered Miss Welch
had said that Mr. Barton had never been kind to any of the various boys
who had been stationed at the exchange desk. Harry gave a little sigh,
then involuntarily straightened his shoulders. He was better fitted
to bear harsh treatment than his chum. Teddy would have flared at the
first cross word on the part of the crabbed aisle manager. He would
have rebelled, defied Mr. Barton, delivered a most uncomplimentary
opinion of him to his face, and then he would have walked out of the
store without waiting to be discharged. That was precisely what Teddy
would have done.
“I’m glad Teddy’s in a nice department and glad folks like him,” was
Harry’s honest reflection, as he walked down one of the aisles of the
book department to the exchange desk. “I suppose ‘what is to be, will
be.’ That’s what Mother always says. Maybe there’s a better day ahead
for me, too. Only I guess it’s so far ahead I can’t see it.”
But while he peered hopefully into the veiled future, that “better day”
was not far distant, although he was destined to pass through one more
ordeal before it dawned.