g lack of
socialistic wisdom and an altogether regrettable tendency to give to
those to whom much had already been given) to bestow upon this
Fortunate Youth enough musical ability to have made the fortune of a
pair of Blind Toms, so that he could play any and all instruments,
instinctively, apparently, and almost equally well. He played also by
ear, with the greatest ease, the most complicated harmonies, and could
accompany anybody's singing or playing of anything whatever--if he
happened to be in the mood for it.

"It is a thousand pities that one could not have found him in the
gutter, that boy," as M. Saint-Saens confided to me, "it would have
been of service to him!"

Which remark, being overheard, scandalised many good British souls
horribly and caused the youth to blush with perfectly ingenuous and
modest pleasure.

He sat down at the great Steinway and ran his long white fingers
loosely over the keys, and said to Margarita, while the butler gazed
in agony at his mistress, and the other guests, all arrayed for one of
the climaxes of one of England's most temperamental importations from
the kitchens of France, stood divided between interest and foreboding,

"I say, Mrs. Bradley, can you sing _'Bid me Good-bye and Go'?_ I'm
awfully fond of that."

"I can sing it if it is here," said Margarita placidly, "why not?"

"Oh, it's safe to be here," he answered easily, and sure enough, it
was there, in a cabinet close by.

Well, it was banal enough, heaven knows--how else could it have been
popular? Lincoln was not a musician, so far as I know, but he knew
that one can't fool all the people all the time! And the good Tosti,
however light he may ring nowadays, had one little bit of information
not always at the disposal of modern song-writers--he understood how
to write for the human voice. Which has always seemed to me a very
valuable acquisition, if one happens to be in the song-writing trade.

So when Margarita, with a quick glance at the obvious little melody,
put her hands behind her back like a school-girl--she was dressed in a
tight, plain little jacket and skirt of English tweeds, with stiff
white collar and cuffs and thick-soled boots, and what used to be
called an "Alpine hat"--and began to sing, to a slow waltz rhythm, one
might not have expected much: indeed, the youth hummed audaciously
with her, at first, and the other men, not one of whom was within many
degrees of nonentity, beat time carelessly.