Miss Spectatia Huskisson was now beginning the first verse
of Wilson Hymack's masterpiece.

Miss Huskisson, like so many of the female denizens of the Middle West,
was tall and blonde and constructed on substantial lines. She was a girl
whose appearance suggested the old homestead and fried pancakes and pop
coming home to dinner after the morning's ploughing. Even her bobbed
hair did not altogether destroy this impression. She looked big and
strong and healthy, and her lungs were obviously good. She attacked the
verse of the song with something of the vigour and breadth of treatment
with which in other days she had reasoned with refractory mules. Her
diction was the diction of one trained to call the cattle home in the
teeth of Western hurricanes. Whether you wanted to or not, you heard
every word.

The subdued clatter of knives and forks had ceased. The diners, unused
to this sort of thing at the Cosmopolis, were trying to adjust their
faculties to cope with the outburst. Waiters stood transfixed, frozen,
in attitudes of service. In the momentary lull between verse and refrain
Archie could hear the deep breathing of Mr. Brewster. Involuntarily
he turned to gaze at him once more, as refugees from Pompeii may have
turned to gaze upon Vesuvius; and, as he did so, he caught sight of Mr.
Connolly, and paused in astonishment.

Mr. Connolly was an altered man. His whole personality had undergone
a subtle change. His face still looked as though hewn from the living
rock, but into his eyes had crept an expression which in another man
might almost have been called sentimental. Incredible as it seemed
to Archie, Mr. Connolly's eyes were dreamy. There was even in them a
suggestion of unshed tears. And when with a vast culmination of sound
Miss Huskisson reached the high note at the end of the refrain and,
after holding it as some storming-party, spent but victorious, holds the
summit of a hard-won redoubt, broke off suddenly, in the stillness which
followed there proceeded from Mr. Connolly a deep sigh.

Miss Huskisson began the second verse. And Mr. Brewster, seeming to
recover from some kind of a trance, leaped to his feet.

"Great Godfrey!"

"Sit down!" said Mr. Connolly, in a broken voice. "Sit down, Dan!"

"He went back to his mother on the train that very day:
He knew there was no other who could make him bright and
gay:
He kissed her on the forehead and he whispered, 'I've come
home!'