Page:Anna Chapin--Half a dozen boys.djvu/218

194 “Rob told me about your being there,” said Fred, completely won from his shyness by the  kind, genial manner of his new friend. “I wish I’d gone, for I heard you sing last January,  and I don’t believe I shall ever forget that.”

Frank Muir had received many a compliment for his singing, but never had one pleased him  more than this, so innocently given.

“Do you like music?” he asked pleasantly.

“Yes, ever so much,” Fred answered. “I was going into the choir, if I hadn’t been—sick; and that night you sang, it was the first  time I had heard any music for ’most a year. Some people put too much flourish into their singing. I don’t know whether you’ll know what I mean, but, anyway, you sang just as if  you meant it.”

Bess, in the midst of her chat with the rector, wondered to see the boy talking so  freely with a stranger. She wondered yet more when to Mr. Muir’s frank, sympathizing  question,—

“Have you been—sick long?”

Fred answered bravely, with no trace of his usual sensitiveness,—