At this Elfie burst into an irrepressible fit of laughter, in which she was joined by all her companions, whose sense of the ludicrous, for the time being, overcame their terrors.
“Oh, grandma! thee how they laugh at me! And who can blame them? for only thee what a guy fox the wretcheth have made of me!” wept Billingcoo.
“Don’t be a simpleton, Lew. And don’t call bad names. Thank Providence that you’ve saved your life with the loss of your clothes,” said the old lady.
Here the voice of Mutchison roared above all other noises:
“Hoi! Grinnel! Have the dinner dished up! we’ll dine sumptuously on the fare provided by our entertainers, the picnic party! And afterwards we’ll have a dance, for I see they’ve got a band here. Hoi! you nigger minstrels! Tune up your instruments. We’ll march to our meals to the sound of music! Come! strike up!”
The terrified darkies, either knowing no better or forgetting in their fright all they ought to have remembered, struck up—“Hail Columbia.”
“Not that! Not that! dash you! What do you mean, burn you? ‘Dixie!’ play ‘Dixie!’” thundered Mutchison.
The panic-stricken musicians obeyed as well as they could, and struck up “Dixie,” though in rather a quavering and uncertain style.
“Come, gentlemen and ladies, now to dinner, and afterwards to the dance. Boys, you who are in evening dresses, each select the lady of his choice and lead her gallantly. And that reminds me! My brave little knight of the pigmies, take the lady you would have died to defend—you see no harm has happened to her—and conduct her to dinner!
‘None but the brave,