She did not put her hands on her hips, or do any of those story-book things.  She grinned, broadly, showing strong white teeth made strong and white through much munching of coarse black bread; not yet showing the neglect common to her class.  She asked a question in a loud, clear voice.

“What’s that?” asked Hahn.

“She’s talking a kind of hunky Hungarian, I guess.  The people here won’t speak German, did you know that?  They hate it.”

The crowd shouted back with one voice.  They settled themselves comfortably, sitting or standing.  Their faces held the broad smile of anticipation.

“She asked them what they want her to sing.  They told her.  It’s the same every day.”

Mizzi Markis stood there before them in the mud, and clay, and straw of the building debris.  And she sang for them a Hungarian popular song of the day which, translated, sounds idiotic and which runs something like this: 

    A hundred geese in a row
    Going into the coop. 
    At the head of the procession
    A stick over his shoulder—­

No, you can’t do it.  It means less than nothing that way, and certainly would not warrant the shrieks of mirth that came from the audience gathered round the girl.  Still, when you recall the words of “A Hot Time”: 

When you hear dem bells go ding-ling-ling,
All join round and sweetly you must sing
And when the words am through in the chorus all join in
There’ll be a hot time
In the old town
To-night. 
My
Ba-
By.

And yet it swept this continent, and Europe, and in Japan they still think it’s our national anthem.

When she had finished, the crowd gave a roar of delight, and clapped their hands, and stamped their feet, and shouted.  She had no unusual beauty.  Her voice was untrained though possessed of strength and flexibility.  It wasn’t what she had sung, surely.  You heard the song in a hundred cafes.  Every street boy whistled it.  It wasn’t that expressive pair of shoulders, exactly.  It wasn’t a certain soothing tonal quality that made you forget all the things you’d been trying not to remember.

There is something so futile and unconvincing about an attempted description of an intangible thing.  Some call it personality; some call it magnetism; some a rhythm sense; and some, genius.  It’s all these things, and none of them.  Whatever it is, she had it.  And whatever it is, Sid Hahn has never failed to recognize it.

So now he said, quietly, “She’s got it.”

“You bet she’s got it!” from Wallie.  “She’s got more than Renee Paterne ever had.  A year of training and some clothes—­”

“You don’t need to tell me.  I’m in the theatrical business, myself.”

“I’m sorry,” stiffly.

But Hahn, too, was sorry immediately.  “You know how I am, Wallie.  I like to run a thing off by myself.  What do you know about her?  Find out anything?”