‘Maybe this lady would be good enough to move back.’ Someone had said it and she was sitting in a corner. She sat, eager, ashamed, embarrassed, the joy of people near making her breath flutter. She heard names called and soon she had a flow of names confused in her mind, blended with running currents of action, looks and words. The fat girl was always slapping at the boy with the beady eyes and these two were always coming back to Tim McNeal and the girl with the white stockings. The graphophone was wound for the dance and then the music came from a large blue and pink metal morning glory. In another room Mr Jim Townley strummed a guitar and now and then he sang a line. Once his voice jerked into the middle of his tonk tonk a-tonk of guitar strings with

Oh…

Say darlin’ say

When I’m far away…

The dance ended and there was a romp. Ellen rose from her chair and went into the other room where she stopped at the door to look about her. Mr Jim finished a stave with a tender arpeggio on the instrument and then muted the strings with a gesture and a little upward flash of his eyes which was directed toward her as she stood just before him. Suddenly she went out of her regret for her torn shoes, out of her memory of herself, out of her lonely nights, out of her presence sitting strangely in the corner at a party.

‘I can sing a song,’ she said.

The people close around grew still. Ellen was standing by the door, terrified at what her lips were saying, her body leaning a little forward from the hips.

‘Well, sing it,’ Mr Townley said. ‘Hush, everybody, hush you-all. Ellen Chesser is a-goen to sing a song.’

‘I can sing Lady Nancy Belle – that’s a story one Mammy taught me a long time ago, one she learned offen her grannie, or I can sing Lucy is a Mighty Generous Lady, whichever you’d rather.’

‘Sing both.’

‘Sing the story one.’

‘Aw, let her sing the Lucy one.’

‘Sing both.’

Nervous movements came over her mouth and strained at her eyes and her throat, but she took a deep breath, caught her breath twice, and began in a shy voice, smiling a little, looking at Mr Townley, or casting down her eyes. After she was well started Mr Townley caught her tune and began to touch the chords on his instrument, and this pleased her very much. She sang:

Lord Lovel he stood by his castle wall

A-comben his milk-white steed;

Down came the Lady Nancy Belle

A-wishen her lover good speed.

A-wishen her lover good-speed.

‘Oh, where are you goen, Lord Lovel?’ she cried,

‘Oh, where are you goen?’ cried she;

‘I’m a-goen, my dear Lady Nancy Belle,

Strange countries for to see…’

She sang of the departing lover and of his promise to return in a year or two or at most in three. But when he had been gone but a year and a day a languishing thought of Nancy Belle came over his mind and he returned only to find the bells of St Pancras tolling and all the people mourning for Nancy Belle who was dead.