An hour before Colina would have crushed him. But it came at an emotional moment. She was blind to his color then.
"I will never, never forget this," she said.
He respectfully lifted her hands to his lips.
The under devil whose especial business it is to preside over fine acting must have rubbed his hands gleefully at the sight of his dark-skinned protégé's aptitude.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE "TEA DANCE."
When Ambrose and Simon Grampierre arrived at the tea-dance they found present as many of the Kakisas of both sexes as could be wedged within Jack Mackenzie's shack.
All around the room they were pressed in tiers, the first line squatting, the second kneeling, the third standing, and others behind, perched on chairs, beds and tables, that all might have a clear view of the floor.
The cook-stove occupied the center of the room, and around it a narrow space had been left for the dancers. The air was suffocating to white lungs, what with human emanations combined with the thick fumes of kinnikinic.
Watusk, still sporting the frock coat and the finger-rings, had improved his costume by the addition of a battered silk hat with a chaplet of red paper roses around the brim.