Page:Harris Dickson--Old Reliable in Africa.djvu/32

 sun-tanned face. Zack rambled along behind her to the music room, stepped one foot inside the door and halted. The room was all white and gold and crimson, sparkling with pendants and mirrors; the furniture was so gilt and bench-legged, the carpet so crimson and Zack's foot sank so deep, that he instinctively drew back. "Huh! mighty few white folks oughter go in dere—an' no niggers a tall!"

But nobody hindered him. Miss Stanton had disappeared in a corner behind some kind of a gingerbread screen. Zack glanced around him, cautiously deposited his hat on that crimson car pet, passed inside the door, and followed her—picking up one foot after the other, like a rooster walking in deep mud.

Her violin case now lay open on the table, and Miss Stanton was taking out a green cloth. She wiped the instrument affectionately, and began to look it over in every seam and string and crevice. Zack turned his head this way and that, craned his neck and twisted his eyes in harmony with her movements. She drew her sigh in the treble, and Zack drew his in the bass. "It's all right, ain't it, Missy?" he asked.

"Yes," she nodded, then drew the bow, ever so lightly, across a string, and laid it down again. "What a tone you have!" she whispered and patted her best-beloved friend. The instrument