"They are not people, I say. It is only philanthropists and other idle men, and those who want the applause of the crowd, who call them people. Look at him, for instance. There is a creature who is more than one of the people. He is a Man, and a Brother too. Ugh!" Hanbury turned away in disgust.
William Sampson, the negro, a tall man with round shoulders and restless eyes, was gesticulating violently, at the open end of Welbeck Place, and addressing loud speech, apparently to the first-floor windows of the houses opposite him in Chetwynd Street.
"What is he, Jack?" asked the girl, whose composure was gradually returning.
"Can't you see, he's a Nigger?"
"I know. But what is he going to do? Why is there a crowd gathering about him?"
The two drew up under the windows which the Negro seemed to be addressing. A couple of dozen people had drifted near the Negro, who was now declaring, in stentorian voice, that he undertook to perform feats hitherto unattempted by man.
"I don't know what he's going to do, at first. Collect money in the end, I am certain. Conjuring; balancing straws or chairs; fire-eating, or something of that kind. Would you like to stay and see, Dora?" His manner softened still further, and he bent his body towards her in a caressing and lover-like way.
She looked up and down, apprehensively. "Yes, if you are not afraid."
"Afraid! Afraid!" he laughed, "afraid of what? You do not think he is a cannibal? and even if he were, they don't permit Niggers to eat harmless English folk in the public streets of London. The days for that kind of thing are gone by here," and he laughed again.
She looked at him protestingly. "You know I didn't mean any such folly. You ought to know what I did mean."