THE KING IS AGAIN DISOWNED
37
heels together. At such times he usually fell to whistling, always out of time and out of tune,[1] with one shoulder hunched ominously up and his bushy russet eyebrows drawn darkly down. He was, in fact, precisely the sort of boy you would suspect if you chanced to find your Crawford's Early ravaged of its last peach, or if your English setter happened to be discovered under the back piazza with a watering-can tied to his tail.
Yet the next day, as you glanced into Lonely's starry and hungry-looking eyes, you might be nervously wondering if, after all, he really got enough to eat at home. Or you
- ↑ Lonely was, in fact, quite tone-deaf. Yet just how blind he was to this defect may be seen from the fact that when the Cowansburg School began practicing for the annual Christmas Cantata, Lonely boldly volunteered as one of the soprano voices. He escaped detection by simply mouthing, and making no sound, when the teacher chanced to stand at his end of the singing line. One day, however, carried away by the joyous rapture of the music, Lonely absent-mindedly poured out his cacophonous young soul, off key and out of tune, to a bewildered and admiring class. The teacher listened, illuminated, and Lonely was cruelly and peremptorily weeded out and ejected—to his lasting shame and sorrow!
