Page:All Kneeling (1928).pdf/135

 "You can't refuse when everyone wants so much to hear you."

"May I put in a special plea for 'Out where the long sea road Follows the curve of the cliff'?"

"Oh yes, exquisite!"

"And please, please, pretty-please, some of those darling kiddie poems!"

Tender assenting groans.

No longer the lonely cold depths of the sea. She rocked gently in the warm sun. They were being too kind, she told them, they were making too much of a fuss over her little songs. She thanked them for it, she loved them for it—but, no.

"Don't say that. Think it over and tell us this evening."

I can't do it, she thought, going down the stateroom. To get up and read in front of all those people! They don't realize how a thing like that drains you, if you're sensitive enough to have written the poems in the first place.

Yet if I have been given something precious,