How happy they seemed, how well able to amuse each other!
Then, as the faces on the steps grew indistinct and the little night noises grew plainer, just as the Club turned to go in somebody called, "Mandalay!" The crowd took it up and "Mandalay!" sounded from all the groups. Three or four girls with guitars turned up from somewhere, and a mandolin was produced from the Hubbard; a tall, slender girl stepped out a little from the rest and turned upon the waiting audience the kind of soft, rich voice that sounds rough and strained indoors, but only a little thrilled and anxious in the open air.
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea,
There's a Burma girl a-settin' an' I know she thinks o' me!
Some of the girls perched on balcony railings; some leaned on each other's shoulders; the strolling pairs and groups stopped, interlocked, and listened as attentively as if they did not already know it by heart; their white dresses glimmered among the shrubbery. Ursula and Theodora Bent, a strange pair, Marjory thought, had dropped down on a bench, the little graceful figure balanced on the back of the seat with one arm over the broad shoulders of her big, careless friend. Nan's merry face took on the almost wistful look that music always brought there, and Marjory wondered if the silent, waiting group knew how soft their eyes grew and how much alike they all looked suddenly.
An' the dawn comes up like thunder out er China 'crost the Bay!
A moment of silence, a burst of applause, and the crowd was scurrying away as if a bell had struck. The chatter rose again, the faces changed, and to crown the transformation a tall, dark girl with a handsome face—the girl they had seen at Kingsley's—rose languidly from the top step of the Washburn and sang with a startling imitation of the first singer, to a group of girls about her:
Oh, that Road to Mandalay!
Must we hear it night and day?
For the author'd swear like thunder if he heard it sung that way!