“Oh, Unc’ Aaron,” she cried, “why didn’t you wait till I got here?”
“How I know yuh comin’, little lady?” the old man gasped out.
“Oh, but won’t you do it over again?” begged Joanne.
“Bref all gone, honey chile. I is too ole fo’ sech extenuations of preformance. Wait twel I gits mah win’ again.”
“Then somebody else do something while Unc’ Aaron rests,” said Joanne. “You, Pablo.”
Pablo shrugged his shoulders and gesticulated with outspread hands in protest. “I? what is it that I can do like to this old?” he said.
“You can play the guitar and sing a Spanish song, I know you can, and I am sure you can dance; every Spaniard dances. Now don’t say you cannot dance for us.”
To hear was to obey when it was Joanne who commanded. Chet was quick to offer his guitar and Pablo strummed a mournful accompaniment to a melancholy song all about graveyards and tombs, but as no one except Joanne understood it, the effect was not as bad as it might have been, and Pablo received respectful thanks.
“Now the dance,” Joanne said. “Can’t somebody play a sort of Spanish dance? I wish we had castanets, then the music wouldn’t matter.”
“You play a Spanish dance, Chet,” said Miss Chesney; “that little thing that I like, you know.”