the mill-stream's whisper,
Like a stream soft-gliding by.

The girl had a drunken mother, and spent a month or two of every year
in the hospital, for her day's work overtaxed her strength. She was one
of those fated toilers, to struggle on as long as any one would employ
her, then to fall among the forgotten wretched. And she sang of
May-bloom and love; of love that had never come near her and that she
would never know; sang, with her eyes upon the beer-stained table, in a
public-house amid the backways of Lambeth.

Totty Nancarrow was whispering to Thyrza:

'Sing something, old girl! Why shouldn't you?'

Annie West was also at hand, urging the same.

'Let 'em hear some real singing, Thyrza. There's a dear.'

Thyrza was in sore trouble. Music, if it were but a street organ,
always stirred her heart and made her eager for the joy of song. She
had never known what it was to sing before a number of people; the
prospect of applause tempted her. Yet she had scarcely the courage, and
the thought of Lydia's grief and anger--for Lydia would surely hear of
it--was keenly present.

'It's getting late,' she replied nervously. 'I can't stay; I can't sing
to-night.'

Only one or two people in the room knew her by sight, but Totty had led
to its being passed from one to another that she was a good singer. The
landlord of the house happened to be in the room; he came and spoke to
her.

'You don't remember me, Miss Trent, but I knew your father well enough,
and I knew you when you was a little 'un. In those days I had the
"Green Man" in the Cut; your father often enough gave us a toon on his
fiddle. A rare good fiddler he was, too! Give us a song now, for old
times' sake.'

Thyrza found herself preparing, in spite of herself. She trembled
violently, and her heart beat with a strange pain. She heard the
chairman shout her name; the sound made her face burn.

'Oh, what shall I sing?' she whispered distractedly to Totty, whilst
all eyes were turned to regard her.

'Sing "A Penny for your thoughts."'

It was the one song she knew of her father's making, a half-mirthful,
half-pathetic little piece in the form of a dialogue between husband
and wife, a true expression of the life of working folk, which only a
man who was more than half a poet could have shaped.

The seedy youth at the piano was equal to any demand for accompaniment;
Totty hummed the air to him, and he had his chords ready without delay.

Thyrza raised h