"Big camp meetin' down the swamp,
Oh, my! Hallelujah!"
Mr. Kean suddenly joined in with a deep, booming bass. He had learned that song many years before in the south, he said, and had never forgotten it.
"He never forgets anything," said Judy proudly, laying her cheek against her father's. "And now, what will you sing, Bobbie, to amuse the ladies?"
Mr. Kean, without the least embarrassment, took the guitar, and, looking so amazingly like Judy that they might have been twins, sang:
"Young Jeremy Jilson Johnson Jenks
Was a lad of scarce nineteen——"
It was a delightful song and the chorus so catchy that after the second verse the entire fudge and stunt party joined in with:
"'Oh, merry-me, merry-me,'
Sang young Jeremy,
'Merry-me, Lovely Lou——'"
Presently Mr. Kean, seizing his daughter around the waist, began dancing, and in a moment everybody was twirling to that lively tune, bumping against each other and tumbling on the divans in an effort to circle around the room. All the time. Mrs. Kean, standing on a chair in the corner, was gently remonstrating and calling out:
"Now, Bobbie, you mustn't make so much noise. This isn't a mining camp."
Nobody heard her soft expostulations, and only the little lady herself heard the sharp rap on the door and noticed a piece of paper shoved under the crack. Rescuing it from under the feet of the dancers, and seeing that it was addressed to "Miss Kean," she opened and read it.