“Then I suppose it’s
‘Five o’clock tea!
Ever to thee
Faithful I’ll be,
Five o’clock tea!’”
laughed Lady Muriel, as she sat down to the piano, and lightly struck a few random chords.
“Not quite: and yet it is a kind of ‘ever to thee faithful I’ll be!’ It’s a pair of hapless lovers: he crosses the briny deep: and she is left lamenting.”
“That is indeed appropriate!” she replied mockingly, as he placed the song before her.
“And am I to do the lamenting? And who for, if you please?”
She played the air once or twice through, first in quick, and finally in slow, time; and then gave us the whole song with as much graceful ease as if she had been familiar with it all her life:—