Franklin Street wasn’t a good place to cry in, so I hurried home.
Still the days that passed did not bring me Dan. I became thoroughly miserable. I sat in my window and watched and was cross if anybody spoke to me.
One day a servant brought up a message:
“Er gent’man in de parlor to see yer, missy.”
“What sort of a ‘gent’man’ is it?” I asked tartly. There was but one man in the world I wanted to see or hear about just then.
“He ain’t lak our people, missy. He’s furrin—French or suppin nuther. He say how he usen ter know yer in Petersburg. An’ how you lent ’im some—er—music—er suppin lak dat. An’ he got—er—errah—suppin—I clar fo’ de Lord, missy, I dunno what ’tis—but he got suppin——”
“Oh, I know,” I said. “He’s that old French music-teacher, and he’s brought back that old music I lent him in the year one. Go tell him that I don’t want it; he can have it.”
Jake departed only to return in a more perplexed frame of mind and state of speech.
“He say how ’tain’t no music he’s got fur yer. He say—he do say, missy—but de Lord knows I dunno what he say!—but anyway be bleeged to see yer.”
I got up and went down to the parlor in desperation.