When I come to, he was done and down, and a bleached lady, so whitewashed and painted she was plumb disguised, was settin’ afore the pyano. Then up gits a tall gal, skinny, long neck, forrid like a fish, hair that hadn’t been curried since week a-fore last.
She begun t’ sing like a dyin’ calf–eyes shut, and makin’ faces. But pretty soon, she took a new holt, and got to goin’ uphill and down, faster ’n Sam Hill; then ’round and ’round, like a dawg after its tail; then hiccupin’; then–she kinda shook herself–and let out a last whoppin’ beller.
“Macie,” I says, “do you have t’ herd with this outfit reg’lar? Why, say, all the wild Injuns ain’t out West.”
She didn’t say nothin’. Pore little gal, she was watchin’ the door. And Mister Long-hair? He was wanderin’ ’round, lookin’ powerful oneasy. (He’d ’a’ better, the scale-haid!) ’Fore long, he goes outside.
Up gits a short, stumpy feller with a fiddle. All the rest begun t’ holler and clap. Stumpy, he bowed and flopped his ears, and then he went at that little, ole fiddle of hisn like he’d snatch it bald-haided. Wal, that was bully!
And now it was Macie they wanted.
“But he ain’t here yet,” she says.
Long-hair come back just then. “I regret to say, Miss Sewell,” he begun, “that Seenyer” (the impressyroa) “cain’t run over t’-night. But he’ll be to my next little recital a month from now.”
“A month,” repeats Macie. Her face fell a mile, and she got as white as chalk-rock.
“It’s all right,” says the Perfessor, rubbin’ his hands. “Go ahaid and sing anyhow.”