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Encountering a negress with a load of oranges on her head, we bought and ate the fruit with eagerness, though the oranges were bitter. The jolting over three miles of stone and rut did not improve the condition of our aching heads.
"Only it's a pity you haven't as much mercy in you as your wife has." "Listen," said Watson, as he motioned the others in the room to be silent. "George, you will watch this old negress, and if she attempts to make a sound, or to leave the room before we are ready, give her a hint from your revolver."
Lucy came slowly into the room and stood near the door. She was of the peculiar-looking negress type sometimes seen in the South light of complexion, with hard, porcelain-like blue eyes and kinky hair which, instead of being black, is brown or brownish red. After her first startled glance toward Bristow she stood with her head lowered and with an expression of sulky stubbornness.
These words brought a deep flush into the poor creature's face. She anxiously pressed her hands on the bandage that covered her ears and said: "Really Has he really come home?" "Only quite lately," said another and more good-natured girl, to soothe her. "Do not believe her!" cried the negress.
Through the low pointed-arch doorway which the negress had forgotten to close, laughter was heard; and the clink of wine-glasses, the popping of champagne corks; and, floating over all the jolly uproar, a feminine voice singing clearly and joyously: "Do you like, Marco la Bella, to dance in the hall hung with bloom?"
"Oh yes, you will," returned the negress coolly; "you'll forgib me when I tells you dat I hab sab' your fadder's life, an' p'r'aps your own too!" "How? What do you mean?" demanded Hester, relaxing her little fists slightly, though still coruscating in the region of the eyes.
The father, who knew it by heart brightened at the opening words of the narrative; his wife soon followed his example; and the negress herself, when he reached the drollest part of it, suddenly gave vent to a laugh, such a loud, rolling torrent of laughter that the horse, becoming excited, broke into a gallop for a while. This served to cement their acquaintance. They all began to chat.
From the Negress, who was his nurse and the general servant of the house, he had learnt to talk her native language. She had been carried off, when ten years old, by a slave-raiding party, and sold to an Egyptian trader at Khartoum; been given by him to an Atbara chief, with whom he had dealings; and, five years later, had been captured in a tribal war by the Jaalin.
She has been here before, and you know it. I've a good mind to have you held for being in charge of this place. If I do, all the Marie Margots and Ike the Droppers can't get you out again." The negress seemed to understand that this was no ordinary raid. "Who is she?" demanded Craig. "I dunno, sah. She come from next door." "I know she did. She's the girl in the office of the Montmartre.
Nodding to the negress to withdraw, the lady handed him the ivory ball, and Jonathan took it with no small degree of curiosity and examined it carefully. It appeared to be of an exceeding antiquity, and of so deep a yellow as to be almost brown in color. It was covered over with strange figures and characters of an Oriental sort, which appeared to our hero to be of Chinese workmanship.
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