“Hold on! Where do I come in?” I simply had to interfere. The thing was an outrage. Fancy getting fish and liver for a blue-mouldy yarn like that.
“And me?” snorted Bob.
“You’re both too fat already,” said Minkie calmly, but she kicked down another lot of hay before she blew the lantern out, and I got a snack of steak while Tibbie was filling up on fish heads and foie de veau. I lapped the best part of her milk, too, when she wasn’t looking.
There was a keen frost that night, and the scent of the nigger, not to mention some beery singers who call themselves “the waits,” kept me awake for hours. Every man has a different smell, though some folk get mad if you tell them so, but the Upper Niger tang was new to me, and I couldn’t help thinking what a place that must be for a hunt if even a well-washed black prince left such a bouquet behind him. I suppose you are surprised to hear a fox-terrier using French words, but I learnt them from Mademoiselle, Minkie’s governess, who went away last month.
Next morning, at breakfast, all the talk was of Prince John and the ju-ju. Schwartz had hunted high and low for his doll, but, considering that it was in Minkie’s pocket, he was not likely to find it. If only he had a nose like me he would soon have been on its track. I fancied the Guv’nor was not altogether pleased that such a rough-and-tumble performance should have taken place at Holly Lodge on a Christmas Eve, and Schwartz was so put out by the loss of the ju-ju that it cast rather a gloom over the household—excepting Minkie, Tibbie and me, of course. As for that fool of a parrot, he, or she—blessed if I can tell one parrot from another, but this one never lays an egg, though everyone calls him “Polly”—well, he was nearly delirious with excitement, because Christmas time brings nuts into his cage. Once the conversation came pretty close to our little secret.
“By the way, Millicent, that negro had a black bag in his hand when he drove home with us last night, didn’t he?” inquired the Old Man, tackling Minkie rather suddenly.
“Oh, yes, father dear. I saw it quite plainly. Did he take it upstairs, Evangeline?”
“I dunno, miss. He fair flummaxed me, he did, with his bowin’ and scrapin’ an, lah-di-dah manners. As I said to Cook—”
“That will do, Evangeline,” put in Mam. “Bring some more toast, please.”
Minkie had steered the question off smartly, but the Guv’nor stuck to his point.