Then Mr. Blythoe did a wonderful thing.  Much was owing to the words and air, but a little something to the way in which Mr. Blythoe sang.  He took his audience with the first bar, and had some of them crying when he was through.  And the song should have been silly.  It was about a gay, gay young dog of a crow, that left the flock and went to a sunny land and lived a mad, mad life; and finally, penitent and old, came home to the north country and saw his old playmates in the distance circling about the old pine-tree, but was too weak to reach them, or to call loud enough for them to hear, and so lay down and died, died, died.  The tune was the sweetest little plaintive wail, and at the end of each stanza it died, died, till you had to cry.

Mr. Blythoe received tremendous applause, but refused to encore.  He winked to Aladdin and bowed himself off.  Then Aladdin executed an unparalleled blush.  He could feel it start in the small of his back and spread all over him—­up under the roots of his hair to the top of his head.  He should have felt proud, instead of which he was suffused with shame.  Margaret caught sight of his face.

“What is it, Aladdin?” she said in a whisper.

“Nothing.”

“Won’t you tell me?”

“It’s nothing.”  He got redder and redder.

“Please.”

With downcast eyes he shook his head.  She looked at him dubiously and a little pathetically for a moment.  Then she said, “Silly goose,” and turned to Manners.

“Poor old crow!” said Manners.  “I had one, Margaret, when I was little; he had his wings clipped and used to follow me like a dog, and one day he saw some of his old friends out on the salt-marsh, and he hopped out to talk it over with them, and they set upon him and killed him.  And I couldn’t get there quick enough to help him—­I beg your pardon.”  He picked up a fan and handed it to the girl on his left, and she, having dropped it on purpose, blushed, thanked him, and giggled.  Manners turned to Margaret again.  “Ever since then,” he said, “when I have a gun in my hand and see a crow, I want to kill him for the sake of the crows that killed mine, and to let him go for the sake of mine, who was such a nice old fellow.  So it’s an awful problem.”

Aladdin sat and looked straight before him.  “Is real fame as awful as this?” he thought.

Somebody clapped him on the shoulder, and a hearty voice, something the worse for wear, said loudly in his ear, “Bully, Aladdin, bully!”

Aladdin looked up and recognized that bad companion, Beau Larch.

“That’s all right,” Aladdin tried to say, but Mr. Larch would not be downed.

“Wasn’t it bully, Margaret?” he said.

“Oh—­hallo—­hallo, Beau!” said she, starting and turning round and collecting her wits.  “What?  Wasn’t what bully?”

Aladdin frowned at Larch with all the forbiddingness that he could muster, but Larch was imperturbable.