All the delinquencies and hiatuses of the plucky little chorus smote his trained ear in a succession of torturing shocks. He knew when the infant basses asked for bread exactly half a bar too late, and heard Helwise calling upon Baal to listen at a moment when she had no business to be singing at all. Through all the shades of alto he could detect a queer grumbling like that of a home-sick cow, and traced it correctly to Harriet. Yet you could not have told from his face that the Second Tenor Angel had dashed his foot against several stones in the way of accidentals, though the conductor moaned and wept, and knocked a mauve hat eastwards in one of his volplaning movements. The professional knew so much better than anybody else just what was the real standard of the big work, and the long rehearsal of the night before had set him marvelling at the perseverance which had brought it into presentable form. He had been told the miles the choir came through wild weather, opening his eyes at the record of attendance; and when he had grasped their deeds achieved, in face of the average of knowledge among them, he saw each member a Hercules striving to seventy times seven, and the little aeroplaning schoolmaster a hero storming Valhalla. The Widow trembled to her feet, and Wiggie guessed that there were real tears behind the first words of pleading for the sick child. He got up presently, long before his time, and stood beside her to give her courage; and when he broke at last into the thrice-repeated, conquering prayer, with eyes fixed on a far window, unheeding the woman’s interjected lament, it seemed to the girl, bitterly conscious of her personal trouble, that it was her own spirit, her own future, that he gave back alive again into her hands.