train from Torquay was rather disturbing. The dining-room service
was not interfered with, but Appleton made up his mind to smoke his
pipe in his own sitting-room and go down to the lounge later to read
the papers, when the crowd might have dispersed. At nine o'clock,
accordingly, he descended, and was preparing to settle himself with
the last "Spectator" when the young lady in the office observed:
"There's a very good concert going on in the drawing-room, sir, if you
enjoy music. No admittance, you know; just a plate at the door as you
leave--quite optional."

Appleton bowed his thanks, filled his pipe, and taking up his
newspaper with a sensation of comfortable idleness, was beginning an
article on the situation in the Balkans, when a voice floated out from
the distant drawing-room, down the long corridor, through the
writing-room into the lounge. It was not a little voice nor a big
voice, it seemed to have no extraordinarily high notes and no low
ones, it did not arrest attention by the agility of its use; but it
was as fresh and young as a bird's and sweeter than honey in the comb.
It began by caroling "My Love's an Arbutus," went on to "The Little
Red Lark" and "The Low-Backed Car," so that Appleton, his head thrown
back in the easy-chair, the smoke wreaths from his pipe circling in
the air, the Balkans forgotten, decided that the singer was Irish.

"A pretty voice, sir," remarked the goddess of the hotel office. "I'm
sorry so many of our guests are playing bowls this evening, and
there's a bridge party of three tables in our first-floor private
sitting-room, or the young lady would have had an audience. She seems
a nice little thing, quite a stranger, with no experience."

If the singer had even a small group of hearers, they were apparently
delighted with "The Low-Backed Car," for with only a second's pause
she gave "The Minstrel Boy." A certain individual quality of tone and
spirit managed to bridge the distance between the drawing-room and
lounge; or perhaps it was the piano accompaniment, so beautifully
played that one could almost imagine it a harp; or was it that the
words were so familiar to Appleton that every syllable was understood,
so that the passion and fire of the old song suffered no loss?

"The minstrel fell, but the foeman's chain
Could not bring that proud soul under!
The harp he loved ne'er spoke again,
For he tore its chords as