"Silence for Myra's idea."

"Well, it's this. If we can't do anything without an audience, and
if the audience won't come to us, let's go to them."

"Be a little more lucid, there's a dear. It isn't that we aren't
trying."

"Well then, let's serenade the other houses about here to-night."

There was a powerful silence while everybody considered this.

"Good," said Archie at last. "We will."

The rest of the morning and all the afternoon were spent in
preparations. Archie and Myra were all right; one plays the banjo
and the other the guitar. (It is a musical family, the Mannerings.)
Simpson keeps a cornet which he generally puts in his bag, but I
cannot remember anyone asking him to play it. If the question has
ever arisen, he has probably been asked not to play it. However, he
would bring it out to-night. In any case he has a tolerable voice;
while Dahlia has always sung like an angel. In short, I was the
chief difficulty.

"I suppose there wouldn't be time to learn the violin?" I asked.

"Why didn't they teach you something when you were a boy?" wondered
Myra.