LADIES-IN-WAITING
dess 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 asunder.”
30
