variety. Mr. Silva was the only member of the choir who invariably sang the right note. Even Miss Todd—whom Walter Dreer spoke of as "gurgling Gertrude"—fumbled for the notes when sight-reading and beat time with her head. There was one point—E or E-sharp—where her voice passed without warning from molten brass into brass wire, and if the finale of her solo called for a sudden jump to G-sharp or A she trembled for a moment like a distraught hot-water pipe, then emitted the same sort of pinched moan—sometimes painfully faint, sometimes squawkingly shrill, When her solos were written higher than usual, Paul mercifully transposed the music without her knowledge. He couldn't transpose the anthems, because then the bassos got beyond their depth; besides, Mr. Silva always knew when one took liberties with the key.
It was time Miss Todd gave place to a new soloist, but nobody had the nerve to tell her so, for she was sweet and gentle. Moreover, it was time he chucked his job, and some bright morning he would. Already he could hear the minister say in his oily voice, "Why, what now, my little man!" Little man—Gee-rusalem! In church, as soon as he had memorized the text, he fooled everybody by reading books behind a high choir seat—books that would have horrified the minister's wife.
Sunday-school was becoming intolerable too. Year in and year out, the same cycle of lessons and golden-texts, with an attempt to enliven the dreary proceedings by coloured cards and chalk pictures of lilies on the blackboard. Decidedly he had outgrown it, as he had outgrown everything else in this sleepy village. There wasn't a grown-up in Hale's Turning who had read books like Werther!
He was developing the habit of playing hookey. One morning, instead of going to school, he and Gritty had
