The Bluecaster Choral Society, numbering over sixty, was packed tightly into the choir-stalls, with a surplus of men on forms. Late comers were greeted with despairing shakes of the head, and stood about in the aisle, looking lost, but in a minute or two they had always miraculously disappeared, stowed away somewhere in the serried ranks. The chancel had been partially decorated in honour of the occasion, and through the fronds of palm and fern could be traced exotic blooms of mystifying shape and colour, appearing presently as ladies’ hats. There was a good deal of whispered conversation in progress--the sort that misses your neighbour’s ear but can be heard well across the aisle--and a fluttering of leaves like a fretted wind up an autumn glade. Hymn-books and direction-papers were being handed about, and anxious-looking tenors stood up and signalled to worried-looking basses. The male portion of a choir is always economical of concentration. No matter how its part in the programme has been explained, it will generally wait to wonder about things until the stick is well up on the opening beat. A twin fluttering was going on in the congregational forest, and feathers and fur bent towards each other in the throes of lowered comment. So Nancy Leyburne _was_ going to be the soprano--the Widow--after all! A little pointed, surely--curious, anyhow--so soon after her broken engagement! And really it was a shocking pity that Graham-Langwathby insisted upon considering himself a tenor, when it was perfectly plain to anybody--anybody _musical_--that he was simply a pushed-up baritone. They might have been sure he would be the Obadiah. You met him at every old thing--like other people’s clothes. “The Angel--oh, my dear, _do_ remember you’re in church!--the Angel, ‘Fidge’ Morseby! Let me see--was it _last_ night I saw her on the luggage-carrier of Captain Gaythorne’s motor-cycle? And at the Gaythornes’ theatricals--well, perhaps I _had_ better wait till we get home.” “Who’s the Elijah?--something Wigmore--C. or G.? Oh, I believe he’s a friend of the new Watters people. I seem to have heard of him--the only one of their old set that they weren’t able to choke off. Colossal cheek to tackle a big thing like ‘Elijah,’ but perhaps he thinks it doesn’t matter here. It’s really very distressing how little outsiders realise our extremely high standard of culture!”