Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

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“What do you mean?” observed another of the audience.

“Why, only this—​that in entertainments of this sort, where amateurs are to appear, there is generally some hitch, some mistake, and as a natural consequence an apology has to be made.”

“Oh, no doubt we shall have one before the evening is over.”

A young lady was now led on by the director. She had a piece of music in her hand, which shook and trembled like an aspen bough agitated by a passing breeze.

It was painfully evident that she was nervous, and those who have experienced that sensation upon facing an audience for the first time will, I am sure, pity her.

She was set down in the programme for Haydn’s canzonet, “My mother bids me bind my hair.”

Luckily for her the piece in question has a lovely introductory pianoforte prelude. This gave the singer time to recover her first shock at seeing the sea of heads before her.

There was no help for it—​she had to commence. The prelude was over, and in faltering accents she began to warble Haydn’s plaintive music. But her throat was dry and husky—​a thing by no means uncommon with nervous singers, and even the applause she received did not appear to lubricate it.