“I wish to shake hands with you,” she said in her frank, winning manner, “and to tell you how much we all enjoyed your singing of ‘Mavourneen.’”
The confused lad doffed his cap and bowed with awkward grace.
“It was mesilf that feared I was disturbing yer slumbers, which if it be the fact I beg yer pardon fur the same.”
“Disturbing our slumbers! Did you hear that, Louis?”
And the artist’s musical laughter rang out. More soberly she asked:
“Will you tell me your name?”
“Mike Murphy—not Michael as some ignorant persons call it—and I’m from Tipperary, in the County of Tipperary, and the town is a hundred miles from Dublin—thank ye kindly, leddy.”
“Are you alone?”
Mike was standing with his cap in hand where the moonlight revealed his homely face and his shock of red hair. His self-possession had quickly come back to him and his waggishness could not be repressed. He glanced into the beautiful face before him and made answer:
“How can I be alone, whin I’m standing in the prisence of the swatest lady on boord the steamer, wid her father at her elbow?”