“What makes ’em look so queer, Millie? Isn’t you afraid?”
“Why no, Miss Daisy. There’s nothing to be afraid of. See; all these funny-looking people are your papa’s friends, and your new mamma’s, and your uncle Alan’s. Look, now,”—drawing the reluctant child forward,—“just look at them! There goes a—a Turk, I guess, and—”
“What makes they all have black things on their faces, Millie?”
“Why, child, that’s the fun of it all. If it wasn’t for them masks everybody would know everybody else, and there wouldn’t be no masquerade.”
“No what?”
“No masquerade, child. Now look at that; there goes a pope, or a cardinal; and there, oh my! that must be a Gipsy—or an Injun.”
“A Gipsy or an Indian; well done, Millie, ha ha ha!”
At the sound of these words they turn swiftly. A tall masker, in a black and scarlet domino, is standing just behind them, and little Daisy utters one frightened cry and buries her face in Millie’s drapery.
“Why, Daisy;” laughs the masker; “little Daisy, are you frightened? Come, this will never do.”
With a quick gesture he flings off the domino and removes the mask from his face, thus revealing a picturesque sailor’s costume, and a handsome face that bears, upon one cheek, the representation of a tattooed anchor.