It was a Friday evening, and the number of guests who arrived on the last 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 asunder." "It's a pity her programme is so old-fashioned," said the young lady of the office, passing his chair to give an order to the page. "It's true only the elderly people went in, but our week-enders are very up-to-date in everything. There's a lot of Londoners here, and those from Torquay are frightfully musical. If they don't get Debewssy, it seems they think nothing of the programme."