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“Oh that I had wings–O that I had wings like a dove!”

Soprano.–“Then would I flee away.” Alto.–“Then would I flee away.” Together.–“And be at rest–flee away and be at rest.”

The clear young voices soared and chased each other among the arches, as if on the very pinions for which they prayed. Then–swept from their seats by an upward sweep of the choirmaster’s arms–the chorus rose, as birds rise, and carried on the strain.

It was not a very fine composition, but this final chorus had the singular charm of fugue. And as the voices mourned like doves, “Oh that I had wings!” and pursued each other with the plaintive passage, “Then would I flee away–then would I flee away—-,” Jack’s ears knew no weariness of the repetition. It was strangely like watching the rising and falling of Daddy Darwin’s pigeons, as they tossed themselves by turns upon their homeward flight.

After the fashion of the piece and period, the chorus was repeated, and the singers rose to supreme effort. The choirmaster’s hands flashed hither and thither, controlling, inspiring, directing. He sang among the tenors.

Jack’s voice nearly choked him with longing to sing too. Could words of man go more deeply home to a young heart caged within workhouse walls?

“Oh that I had wings like a dove! Then would I flee away–” the choirmaster’s white hands were fluttering downwards in the dusk, and the chorus sank with them–“flee away and be at rest!”

SCENE IV.

Jack March had a busy little brain, and his nature was not of the limp type that sits down with a grief. That most memorable tea-party had fired his soul with two distinct ambitions. First, to be a choir-boy; and, secondly, to dwell in Daddy Darwin’s Dovecot. He turned the matter over in his mind, and patched together the following facts:

The Board of Guardians meant to apprentice him, Jack, to some master, at the earliest opportunity. Daddy Darwin (so the old pauper told him) was a strange old man, who had come down in the world, and now lived quite alone, with not a soul to help him in the house or outside it. He was “not to say mazelin yet, but getting helpless, and uncommon mean.”

A nephew came one fine day and fetched away the old pauper, to his great delight. It was by their hands that Jack despatched a letter, which the nephew stamped and posted for him, and which was duly delivered on the following morning to Mr. Darwin of the Dovecot.

The old man had no correspondents, and he looked long at the letter before he opened it. It did credit to the teaching of the workhouse schoolmistress:

“HONORED SIR,

“They call me Jack March. I’m a workhouse lad, but, sir, I’m a good one, and the Board means to ‘prentice me next time. Sir, if you face the Board and take me out you shall never regret it. Though I says it as shouldn’t I’m a handy lad. I’ll clean a floor with any one, and am willing to work early and late, and at your time of life you’re not what you was, and them birds must take a deal of seeing to. I can see them from the garden when I’m set to weed, and I never saw nought like them. Oh, sir, I do beg and pray you let me mind your pigeons. You’ll be none the worse of a lad about the place, and I shall be happy all the days of my life. Sir, I’m not unthankful, but please GOD, I should like to have a home, and to be with them house doves.

“From your humble servent–hoping to be–

“JACK MARCH.”

“Mr. Darwin, Sir. I love them Tumblers as if they was my own.”

Daddy Darwin thought hard and thought long over that letter. He changed his mind fifty times a day. But Friday was the Board day, and when Friday came he “faced the Board.” And the little workhouse lad went home to Daddy Darwin’s Dovecot.