s over, everybody said, "Ah, that dear old
thing!" Then there was an outbreak of deeper voices from the stairs, with
lustier laughter and heavier steps.

The gentlemen appeared, talking loudly as they entered. Koenig was back
at the organ and playing as if he wished it were the 'cello and the drum
and the whole brass band. Glory was watching everything; it was beginning
to be very funny. Suddenly it ceased to be so. One of the gentlemen was
saying, in a tired drawl: "Old Koenig again! How the old boy lasts! Seem
to have been hearing--him since the Flood, don't you know."

It was Lord Robert Ure. Glory caught one glimpse of him, then looked down
at her slipper and pawed at the carpet. He put his glass in his eye,
screwed up the left side of his face, and looked at her.

An elderly man with a leonine head came up to the organ and said: "Got
anything comic, Mr. Koenig? All had the influenza last winter, you know,
and lost our taste for the classical."

"With pleasure, sir," said Koenig, and then turning to Glory he touched
her wrist. "How's de pulse? Ach Gott! beating same like a child's! Now is
your turn."

Glory made a step forward, and the talk grew louder as she was observed.
She heard fragments of it. "Who is she?" "Is she a professional?"
"Oh, no--a lady." "Sing, does she, or is it whistling?" "No, she's a
professional; we had her last year; she does conjuring." And then the
voice she had heard before said, "By Jove, old fellow, your young friend
looks like a red standard rose!" She did not flinch. There was a nervous
tremor of the lip, a scarcely perceptible curl of it, and then she began.

It was Mylecharaine, a Manx ballad in the Anglo-Manx, about a farmer who
was a miser. His daughter was ashamed of him because he dressed shabbily
and wore yellow stockings; but he answered that if he didn't the stocking
wouldn't be yellow that would be forthcoming for her dowry.

She sang, recited, talked, acted, lived the old man, and there was not a
sound until she finished, except laughter and the clapping of hands. Then
there was a general taking of breath and a renewed outbreak of gossip.
"Really, really! How--er--natural!" "Natural--that's it, natural. I
never--er----" "Rather good, certainly; in fact, quite amusing." "What
dialect is it?" "Irish, of course." "Of course, of course," with many
nods and looks of knowledge, and a buzz and a flutter of understanding.
"Hope she'll do something else." "Hush! she's beginning