Hop ’long, Peter’s son.”
Roden was delighted with her rich, reed-noted voice. She imitated the negroes’ tones to perfection. The inflection and intonation were without fault.
“How well you do it!” he said. “It’s really awfully pretty. Can’t you give me another?”
She sang him one or two more, and ended by repeating in a singsong fashion a little rhyme which convulsed him:
“Mars’r had a leetle dorg,
An’ he was three parts houn’;
Ev’y time he strike a trail
He bounce up off de groun’.”
“They make up all these things, of course?” he asked her.