She was examining the ornament on the back of which was carved a
miniature bar of music, with three or four notes. The child had seen
written music in a hymn-book, which belonged to her mother, and from
which she had often pretended to sing, when she played at a _funeral_,
or prayer meeting, as she sometimes did under the _shady_. Jake had not
spoken of this habit to the Colonel. He was waiting to take him to the
graves, and the play-house near them, and he was watching the child as
she examined the carving. Lifting up her bright eyes to the Colonel,
she said, "Moosich--me sing," and a burst of childish song rang through
the room--part of a negro melody, and "Me wants to be an angel"
alternating in a kind of melody, to which the Colonel listened in
wonder.
"Me done sing dood," she said, and her eyes shone and flashed, and her
bosom rose and fell, as if she were standing before an audience, sure of
success and applause.
Jake did clap his hands when she finished, and said to the Colonel, "She
done goes on dat way very often. She's wonderful wid her voice an' eyes.
'Specs she'll make a singer. She's a little quar--dem Harrises--"
Here he stopped suddenly, and asked, "Is you cole?" as he saw the
Colonel shiver. He knew the Harrises were _quar_, and this dark-haired,
dark-eyed child singing in a shrill, high-pitched, but very sweet voice,
seemed to him uncanny, and he shrank from her as she said. "Me sing some
mo'."
Jake now interfered, saying, "No, honey; we're gwine to yer mother's
grave."
"Me go, too," the child answered, slipping her hand into the Colonel's
and leading the way to a little enclosure where the Harrises were
buried.
The Colonel felt _quar_ with that hand holding his so tight, and the
child hippy-ty-hopping by his side over the boards Jake had put down for
a walk to the graveyard.
"Dis mine. Me play here," the child said, more intent upon her
play-house than upon her mother's grave.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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