Crossword-Solution: CHOIRBOY 8 letters, 18 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 18

There were still some masterly bits, the choirboy holding the cross, the group of daughters of the Virgin carrying the bier, whose white dresses and ruddy flesh furnished a pretty contrast with the black Sunday toggery of the rustic mourners, among all the green stuff; only the priest in his alb, the girl carrying the Virgin’s banner, the family following the body, were drily handled; the whole picture, in fact, was displeasing in its very science and the obstinate stiffness of its treatment.

The procession, preceded by the mourning coach in which the priest and the choirboy were seated, now descended the other side of the height, along winding streets as precipitous as mountain paths.

The priest in his surplice and the choirboy carrying the holy water receiver, who had both alighted from the mourning coach, walked on ahead.

All the others were going off, the surplices of the priest and the choirboy disappeared between the green trees, while the straggling neighbours loitered reading the inscriptions on the surrounding tombs.

There'll be prefects present, and perhaps a master or two!" Being too wise to weary them by endless repetition, Robin dropped the chorus there and then, and passed to the next item on the programme, which was a song by "Allan a Dale", otherwise Frank Locke, the only Merry Man who sang solos as a choirboy, though always painfully shy about using his clear voice.