"I can't sing them all at once," she said, gayly. "But if you'll settle on one that I know, I'll do my best for you. You've given me an awfully good time tonight, and I'm only too glad to sing for you."
After a great deal of good-humored bickering and sifting of requests to suit Patricia's repertoire, the tumult gradually quieted and Patricia rose.
"I'll sing 'Mary of Argyle' first, and then a new little song, but it won't sound very well without any accompaniment," she said simply, and then, folding her hands before her and tilting her head like a bird, she began to sing, softly at first and then louder till her voice soared and rang echoing through the bare, empty rooms that flanked the lunch rooms.
"I have watched thy heart, my Mary,
And its goodness was the wile,
That has made me thine forever,
Bonnie Mary of Argyle."
Patricia's voice swelled and sank on the last lines of the old song, and the girls broke into hearty applause, which was startlingly reinforced from the doorway of the lumber cellar. The janitor's sallow face appeared from the gloom and his deep voice boomed an encore.
"Fine! Fine!" he cried, nodding his head approvingly. "That beats them all! My wife, she used to sing that song, and I liked it fine, but you beat them all!"
Patricia blushed with pleasure, and Griffin called out heartily, "Bring her in, Eitel. There's going to be another!"
As the janitor padded away to the domestic portion of the basement to fetch his smiling wife, Griffin added to Patricia, "They're an awfully good sort. You don't mind, do you?"
"No, indeed!" cried Patricia. "It's sweet of them to like it!"
Doris Leighton smiled at Elinor in the crowd and murmured a word of praise for the singing, adding, however, that she was afraid that the janitor could hardly appreciate it.