Page:Waylaid by Wireless - Balmer - 1909.djvu/335

Rh a little Scotch girl down in the steerage with one of the sweetest natural voices I have ever heard. She has been singing to us the last few nights after you have gone down, and you have been missing it. Can't you stay and hear her to-night?"

The girl thought a moment.

"If the other women stay," she consented at last.

The band had stopped, and the band-men were putting up their instruments; but the word seemed to have travelled along the deck, for no one got up except the few who, for the better hearing, moved down nearer the rail over the steerage.

"Listen!" Preston said. "They are clapping for her now. The other night some of them—more Americans than English, I am afraid—threw down money and she wouldn't sing. She is not that sort. You will understand when you hear her."

The clapping ceased suddenly, and in the silence which fell at once over all the deck a 307