The choirmaster sighed ecstatically. A voice so tender, so soft, so rich in appealing inflections he had never heard. The repeated vowels cooed, they caressed, they allured. “_You’re the nices’ man n’ I ever knoo, Oo-oo-oo-oo!_” If you remember how Madame Melba cooes, “Edgardo! Edgardo-o-o!” when she sings the mad scene from “Lucia,” you will have an idea of the liquid, slipping notes of that snub-nosed, freckled boy. “What’s your name?” asked the choirmaster respectfully. It appeared at first to be Egg-nog, but resolved into Edgar Ogden under careful cross-examination, and its owner agreed to attend three weekly rehearsals and two Sunday services for the princely salary of twenty-five cents a week, the same to be increased in proportion to his progress. Subsequent efforts proved that it was utterly hopeless to attempt to teach him to read music. When Tim Mullaly and the stupidest alto in the United States—as the choirmaster assured him—could stumble through what was considerately known as a duet at sight, and that was the work of many months, Edgar was still learning his solos by ear. It was wasted effort to insist, and the choirmaster spent long hours and nearly wore his forefinger to the bone, fixing in his pupil’s mind the succession of notes in anthems and _Te Deums_. Once learned, however, he never forgot them, and Mr. Fellowes thrilled with pride as the silver stream of his voice flowed higher, higher, above the organ, beyond the choir at his side, till the people in the church sighed and craned their necks to look at the wonderful boy. [Illustration: “_As a matter of fact, they looked, most of them, at Tim._”] As a matter of fact, they looked, most of them, at Tim Mullaly, who, fresh from his Saturday bath, in his little cassock and cotta, realized the dreams of the most exigent lithographer. He stood next to Edgar, and owing to a certain weakness of mind invariably followed with his lips the entire libretto, so to speak, of the work in hand. As his appealing expression and violet eyes were undetachable, he had all the effect of the soloist, and received most of the credit from that vast majority who fail to distinguish one little boy, like one Chinaman, from another, unless he possesses some such salient feature as Tim’s pleading gaze.