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Here a snakecharmer gathered a meagre crowd about him; there an 'A'l'meh, or singing-girl, lilted a ribald song; elsewhere hashish-smokers stretched out gaunt, loathsome fingers towards them; and a Sha'er recited the romance of Aboo Zeyd.
The sensation culminated when, out of the crowd, a hand was laid upon his shoulder and a familiar voice rose above the babble of sound. "Well, and are we girded for the heights?" It came at the right moment, it lilted absolutely with his thoughts the soft, pleasant tones, the easy friendliness that seemed to accept all things as they came.
It rippled, it lilted, it died away, and rolled forth again until the most blase listener smiled in sympathy, and children in the streets haw-hawed in mindless glee. It was the laugh of Hannah Mrs. 'Rastus Calhoun Breckenridge, as her husband was careful to explain; and he once so far forgot his dignity as to add, expansively, "We got de stifkit dat prove hit, Hannah an' me.
He pulled her hand through his arm and led her out of the ball-room, with the black woman following sulkily, muttering to herself. Burr bent closely down over Dorothy's drooping head as they passed out of the door. "Don't be frightened, sweetheart," whispered he. Madelon saw him as she lilted, and it seemed to her that she heard what he said.
A voice that was honey and gold and velvet and all that is most sweet and rich and soft in the world! Find me another voice like that, you prime donne! Find me a simile for it, you uninventive poets! Indeed, I'd like to see you do it. But he chimed in, nevertheless, with his pleasant throaty baritone, and lilted his own part quite creditably.
Then some of the men stood up and began to dance, while another lilted the measure they danced to, and then somebody sang Eiblin a Ruin, that glad song of meeting which has always moved me more than other songs, because the lover who made it sang it to his sweetheart under the shadow of a mountain I looked at every day through my childhood.
My bones were molten with fright, and I had not one ounce of bravery in me. Something not myself took hold on me, and spoke for me. Ringan's tunes, a brisk one this time, lilted in my ear. I could not believe my own voice. But I rejoice to say that my reply was to consign every Indian in America to the devil. I shook with fear when I had spoken.
And then I up and skedaddled." Miss Gordon's conscience added its protest to that of her dignity, and she spoke. "I prefer that you should not discuss your various mistresses with me, Sarah Emily. I can have nothing to do with your affairs now, you see." Sarah Emily lilted the refrain of her song: "Timmy eigh timmy um, timmy tum tum tum, Of all false young men to beware!
"Oh," she lilted, "oh, so you would be knocking to that unkind lass;" and then in a far-away voice, "Will you be remembering that place where I found you, when I would be running a wild thing like a young foal? . . ." "Bonnily, Belle, bonnily I mind ye a long-legged, black-maned filly ye were, and the big eyes o' ye, I began to love ye then. . . ."
But that day she did not doubt her eyes, that star dust danced in the waves of sunshine; that the gray snow birds played crack the whip outside the window; that the willow hedge, palpitating in the sunshine, beat time with its silvery branches to the music that lilted through her heart; that the blue in the sky was bluer than it had been, and the sunshine more golden than it ever was in the highest noon in highest June.
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