Collier’s Weekly/Banjo Nell

BANJO NELL
The Little Melody-Maker Who Sailed Away to Her Fate in the Tropical Islands
By JAMES HOPPER
BEING only of the civil service, we had been assigned, by the fat Q. M. captain, to a darkish, dirtyish cabin between decks; and hence were irreverent of the beings of the roomy, enameled quarters above. So we dubbed her "Banjo Nell" almost as she placed her little buckled shoe upon the polished planks of the white army transport. The naming, it must be said, called for no violent effort of the imagination; she glided toward the cabin, along the dazzling deck, accompanied by no baggage we could discern except a box, shaped like a doll's coffin, which she held affectionately against her heart, and which gave out, when accidentally struck against a brass railing, a muffled and yet resonant note that shuddered a moment like a plaint.
She was young and slender and very light; her dress was a pastelle blue, her hat a pastelle pink, and both dress and hat somehow gave an impression of being extraordinarily beribboned, though when you analyzed the impression, you found it based on very little fact. In the same manner, her entire personality, through no cause you could immediately disce

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