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!’
     He told her he was never going any more to roam. 
     And onward through the happy years, till he grew old and
        grey,
     He never once regretted those brave words he once did say: 
     It’s a long way back to mother’s knee—­”

The last high note screeched across the room like a shell, and the applause that followed was like a shell’s bursting.  One could hardly have recognised the refined interior of the Cosmopolis dining-room.  Fair women were waving napkins; brave men were hammering on the tables with the butt-end of knives, for all the world as if they imagined themselves to be in one of those distressing midnight-revue places.  Miss Huskisson bowed, retired, returned, bowed, and retired again, the tears streaming down her ample face.  Over in a corner Archie could see his brother-in-law clapping strenuously.  A waiter, with a display of manly emotion that did him credit, dropped an order of new peas.

“Thirty years ago last October,” said Mr. Connolly, in a shaking voice, “I—­”

Mr. Brewster interrupted him violently.

“I’ll fire that orchestra-leader!  He goes to-morrow!  I’ll fire—­” He turned on Archie.  “What the devil do you mean by it, you—­you—­”

“Thirty years ago,” said Mr. Connolly, wiping away a tear with his napkin, “I left me dear old home in the old country—­”