mud, and clay, and straw of
the building debris. And she sang for them a Hungarian popular song of
the day which, translated, sounds idiotic and which runs something like
this:

A hundred geese in a row
Going into the coop.
At the head of the procession
A stick over his shoulder--

No, you can't do it. It means less than nothing that way, and certainly
would not warrant the shrieks of mirth that came from the audience
gathered round the girl. Still, when you recall the words of "A Hot
Time":

When you hear dem bells go ding-ling-ling,
All join round and sweetly you must sing
And when the words am through in the chorus all join in
There'll be a _hot time_
In the _old town_
To-night.
My
Ba-
By.

And yet it swept this continent, and Europe, and in Japan they still
think it's our national anthem.

When she had finished, the crowd gave a roar of delight, and clapped
their hands, and stamped their feet, and shouted. She had no unusual
beauty. Her voice was untrained though possessed of strength and
flexibility. It wasn't what she had sung, surely. You heard the song in
a hundred cafes. Every street boy whistled it. It wasn't that expressive
pair of shoulders, exactly. It wasn't a certain soothing tonal quality
that made you forget all the things you'd been trying not to remember.

There is something so futile and unconvincing about an attempted
description of an intangible thing. Some call it personality; some call
it magnetism; some a rhythm sense; and some, genius. It's all these
things, and none of them. Whatever it is, she had it. And whatever it
is, Sid Hahn has never failed to recognize it.

So now he said, quietly, "She's got it."

"You bet she's got it!" from Wallie. "She's got more than Renee Paterne
ever had. A year of training and some clothes--"

"You don't need to tell me. I'm in the theatrical business, myself."

"I'm sorry," stiffly.

But Hahn, too, was sorry immediately. "You know how I am, Wallie. I
like to run a thing off by myself. What do you know about her? Find out
anything?"

"Well, a little. She doesn't seem to have any people. And she's decent.
Kind of a fierce kid, I guess, and fights when offended. They say she's
Polish, not Hungarian. Her mother was a peasant. Her father--nobody
knows. I had a dickens of a time finding out anything. The most terrible
language in the world--Hungarian. They'll stick a _b