How the boys clapped her! So did I, of course, and, holding myself well in hand, I exchanged comments on the lovely voice with the other girls through the clatter and the cries of "'Core! Encore!"
The Signora gave a little nod that she would take the encore to Muriel, who was clapping as enthusiastically as any of the audience.
And the second song she sang was the revue success: "For the First Love is the Best Love!" which she rendered as perfectly as she had the Victorian ballad. I could have murdered her for that!
Half in anguish of jealousy, half in rapture because of the performance, I sat listening again. She had the low, throaty deliciousness of some of Miss Violet Loraine's own notes; very wisely, she was imitating her as closely as possible in her rendering of her best song.
"The new Love
Is never the true Love!"
she carolled, and again I felt the keen stab of seeing her mischievously tender glance at Captain Holiday.
Oh, yes. She must be going to take him—after that!
And at the end of the song, when she stood still again, swaying her fan to the applause, she maddened me by a further piece of deliberate coquetry.
Putting up a hand to the coal-black hair under her mantilla, she took out the scarlet carnation that was tucked close to her ear. She kissed the flower with those lips, painted so red. Then, holding it for a moment, she smiled from the carnation to Captain Holiday, if saying, "Shall I let him have it? Shall I?" She made a little, quick gesture as if to toss it to him, across the platform. Then, with a lightning-swift shake of her lovely head, she took that flower and threw it down into the auditorium for any to catch who could.
A dozen hands went out for it. I don't know if she were specially aiming at the row in which we Land Girls found ourselves, but at all events the carnation dropped almost straight into the small, brown, competent paw of Elizabeth, my chum, who had always been used to catch and throw a cricket ball just as a boy does.