does
know how to roll them big eyes of hers.

I didn't much enjoy listenin' through them first few bars, though. There
wasn't merely a crack here and there. Her voice went to a complete smash
at times, besides bein' weak and wabbly. It's like listenin' to the
ghost of a voice. I heard a few titters from the back rows.

But them old boys don't seem to mind. It was a voice comin' to them from
'way back in the '90's. And when she struggles through the first verse
of "O Promise Me," and pauses to get her second wind, maybe they don't
give her a hand. That seemed to pep her up a lot. She gets a better grip
on the high notes, the tremolo effect wears off, and she goes to it like
a winner. Begins to get the crowd with her, too. Why, say, even Farrar
stands up and leads in the call for an encore. She ain't alone.

"MacFadden! MacFadden!" K. W. Mason is shoutin'.

So in a minute more Clara Belle, her eyes shinin', has swung into that
raggy old tune, and when she gets to the chorus she beckons to the front
rows and says: "Now, all together, boys!

"Wan--two--three!
Balance like me----"

Did they come in on it? Say, they roared it out like so many young
college hicks riotin' around the campus after a session at a
rathskeller. You should have seen Old Hickory standin' out front with
his arms wavin' and his face red.

Then they demands some of the Katishaw stuff, and "Comrades," and
"Little Annie Rooney." And with every encore Clara Belle seems to shake
off five or ten years, until you could almost see what a footlight
charmer she must have been.

In the midst of it all Vee gives me the nudge.

"Do look at Mr. Tupper, will you!"

Yes, he's sittin' over in a corner, with his white shirt-front bulgin',
his neck stretched forward eager, and his big hairy paws grippin' the
chair-back in front. And hanged if a drop of brine ain't tricklin' down
one side of his nose.

"Gosh!" says I. "His emotions are leakin' into his whiskers. Maybe the
old boy is human, after all."

A minute later, as I slides easy out of my end seat, Vee asks:

"Where are you going, Torchy?"

"I want a glimpse of Mrs. Pemmy Foote's face, that's all," says I.

CHAPTER VIII

WHEN TORCHY GOT THE CALL

No, I ain't said much about it before. There are some things you're apt
to keep to yourself, specially the ones that root deep. And I'll admit
that at first there I don't quite know where I wa