fashion.

He was worth looking at, was Jeekie. Let the reader imagine a very tall
and powerfully-built negro with a skin as black as a well-polished boot,
woolly hair as white as snow, a little tufted beard also white, a
hand like a leg of mutton, but with long delicate fingers and pink,
filbert-shaped nails, an immovable countenance, but set in it beneath a
massive brow, two extraordinary humorous and eloquent black eyes which
expressed every emotion passing through the brain behind them, that is
when their owner chose to allow them to do so. Such was Jeekie.

"Shall I unlace your boots, Major?" he said in his full, melodious voice
and speaking the most perfect English. "I expect that the gong will
sound in nine and a half minutes."

"Then let it sound and be hanged to it," answered Alan; "no, I forgot--I
must hurry. Jeekie, put that fire out and open all the windows as soon
as I go down. This room is like a hot-house."

"Yes, Major, the fire shall be extinguished and the sleeping-chamber
ventilated. The other boot, if you please, Major."

"Jeekie," said Alan, "who is stopping in this place? Have you heard?"

"I collected some names on my way upstairs, Major. Three of the
gentlemen you have never met before, but," he added suddenly breaking
away from his high-flown book-learned English, as was his custom when
in earnest, "Jeekie think they just black niggers like the rest, thief
people. There ain't a white man in this house, except you and Miss
Barbara and me, Major. Jeekie learnt all that in servant's hall palaver.