At the thought of it Joy felt her usual affectionate
amusement. When it was over he would be very sorry.
"You haven't told me anything about the comic opera yet," she hinted
to Clarence, who had been quite silent for the last while. "Don't
you want to?"
"I do!" said Clarence, coming out of his muse and turning into his
ordinary self. "We will sit down on the next stump or stone we see,
and go into the matter thoroughly."
It was a large flat stone, with a tree for Joy to lean against. They
sat down on it, and Clarence pulled the libretto book out of his
pocket, and they went to work.
Joy knew the Gilbert and Sullivan operas from a copy of the words
that had always been around the house. So there was no delay while
she read the book through, as Clarence seemed to have expected.
"To my mind it lies between 'Patience' and 'Iolanthe,'" said
Clarence. "The 'Mikado' has been done to death, and so has 'Trial by
Jury.' And 'Princess Ida' is too full of blank verse, and the men's
solos are too hard."
So far as Joy was concerned nothing had been done to death. She
would quite willingly have been the humblest chorus-girl in
"Pinafore," if Clarence had willed to have that much-done classic.
But he seemed determined to have her play a large part in whatever
it was, and to have whatever it was _Iolanthe_. He wanted to be
_Strephon_, it seemed; in fact, he had been. And he wanted Joy
for the _Phyllis_ or _Iolanthe_.
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