Sally's admirers, and mischievous security to that finished coquette
herself.

It was a pleasant September afternoon, on possibly one of these
occasions, that Miss Sally, sitting before the piano, alternately
striking a few notes with three pink fingers and glancing at her
reflection in the polished rosewood surface of the lifted keyboard case,
was heard to utter this languid protest:--

"Quit that kind of talk, Chet, unless you just admire to have every word
of it repeated all over the county. Those little niggers of Mammy Judy's
are lying round somewhere and are mighty 'cute, and sassy, I tell you.
It's nothin' to ME, sure, but Miss Hilda mightn't like to hear of it. So
soon after your particular attention to her at last night's pawty too."

Here a fresh-looking young fellow of six-and-twenty, leaning uneasily
over the piano from the opposite side, was heard to murmur that he
didn't care what Miss Hilda heard, nor the whole world, for the matter
of that. "But," he added, with a faint smile, "folks allow that you know
how to PLAY UP sometimes, and put on the loud pedal, when you don't want
Mammy's niggers to hear."

"Indeed," said the young lady demurely. "Like this?"

She put out a distracting little foot, clothed in the white stocking and
cool black prunella slipper then de rigueur in the State, and, pressing
it on the pedal, began to drum vigorously on the keys. In vain the
amorous Chet protested in a voice which the instrument drowned.
Perceiving which the artful young lady opened her blue eyes mildly and
said:--