ostentation in front of them; they had no illusions concerning it; their knowledge of financial realities was exact.  Up in the gloom of the balcony the crowded faces of the unimportant and the obscure rose tier above tier to the organ-loft.  Here was Florence Gardner, come incognito to deride; here was Fred Ryley, thief of an evening’s time; and here were sundry dressmakers who experienced the thrill of the creative artist as they gazed at their confections below.

The entire audience was nervous, critical, and excited:  partly because nearly every unit of it boasted a relative or an intimate friend in the Society, and partly because, as an entity representing the town, it had the trepidations natural to a mother who is about to hear her child say a piece at a party.  It hoped, but it feared.  If any outsider had remarked that the youthful Bursley Operatic Society could not expect even to approach the achievements of its remarkable elder sister at Hanbridge, the audience would have chafed under that invidious suggestion.  Nevertheless it could not believe that its native talent would be really worth hearing.  And yet rumours of a surprising excellence were afloat.  The excitement was intensified by the tuning of instruments in the orchestra, by certain preliminary experiments of a too anxious gasman, and most of all by a delay in beginning.

At length the Mayor entered, alone; the interesting absence of the Mayoress had some connection with a silver cradle that day ordered from Birmingham as a civic gift.

‘Well, Burgess,’ the Mayor whispered benevolently, ’what sort of a show are we to have?’

‘You will see, Mr. Mayor,’ said Harry, whose confident smile expressed the spirit of the Society.

Then the conductor—­the man to whom twenty instrumentalists and thirty singers looked for guidance, help, encouragement, and the nullifying of mistakes otherwise disastrous; the man on whose nerve and animating enthusiasm depended the reputation of the Society and of Bursley—­tapped his baton and stilled the chatter of the audience with a glance.  The footlights went up, the lights of the chandelier went down, and almost before any one was aware of the fact the overture had commenced.  There could be no withdrawal now; the die was cast; the boats were burnt.  In the artistic history of Bursley a decisive moment had arrived.

In a very few seconds people began to realise, slowly, timidly, but surely, that after all they were listening to a real orchestra.  The mere volume of sound startled them; the verve and decision of the players filled them with confidence; the bright grace of the well-known airs laid them under a spell.  They looked diffidently at each other, as if to say:  ‘This is not so bad, you know.’  And when the finale was reached, with its prodigious succession of crescendos, and its irresistible melody somehow swimming strongly through a wild sea of tone, the audience forgot its pose of critical aloofness and became unaffectedly human.  The last three bars of the overture were smothered in applause.