Yet if Sir Lupus could not only overlook it, but laugh at it, I, certes, had no right to rebuke what to me seemed a gross insult. Toasts flew fast now, and there was a punch in a silver bowl as large as a bushel--and spirits, too, which was strange, seeing that the ladies remained at table. Then Captain Campbell would have all to drink the Royal Greens, standing on chairs, one foot on the table, which appeared to be his regiment's mess custom, and we did so, the ladies laughing and protesting, but finally planting their dainty shoes on the edge of the table; and Magdalen Brant nigh fell off her chair--for lack of balance, as Sir George Covert protested, one foot alone being too small to sustain her. "That Cinderella compliment at our expense!" cried Betty Austin, but Sir Lupus cried: "Silence all, and keep one foot on the table!" And a little black slave lad, scarce more than a babe, appeared, dressed in a lynx-skin, bearing a basket of pretty boxes woven out of scented grass and embroidered with silk flowers. At every corner he laid a box, all exclaiming and wondering what the surprise might be, until the little black, arching his back, fetched a yowl like a lynx and ran out on all fours. "The gentlemen will open the boxes! Ladies, keep one foot on the table!" bawled Sir Lupus. We bent to open the boxes; Magdalen Brant and Dorothy Varick, each resting a hand on my shoulder to steady them, peeped curiously down to see. And, "Oh!" cried everybody, as the lifted box-lids discovered snow-white pigeons sitting on great gilt eggs. The white pigeons fluttered out, some to the table, where they craned their necks and ruffled their snowy plumes; others flapped up to the loop-holes, where they sat and watched us. "Break the eggs!" cried the patroon. I broke mine; inside was a pair of shoe-roses, each set with a pearl and clasped with a gold pin. Betty Austin clapped her hands in delight; Dorothy bent double, tore off the silken roses from each shoe in turn, and I pinned on the new jewelled roses amid a gale of laughter. "A health to the patroon!" cried Sir George Covert, and we gave it with a will, glasses down. Then all settled to our seats once more to hear Sir George sing a song. A slave passed him a guitar; he touched the strings and sang with good taste a song in questionable taste: "Jeanneton prend sa fauçille." A delicate melody and neatly done; yet the verse-- "Le deuxième plus habile L'embrassant sous le menton"-- made me redden, and the envoi nigh burned me alive with blushes, yet was rapturously applauded, and the patroon fell a-choking with his gross laughter. Then Walter Butler would sing, and, I confess, did it well, though the song was sad and the words too melancholy to please. "I know a rebel song," cried Colonel Claus. "Here, give me that fiddle and I'll fiddle it, dammy if I don't--ay, and sing it, too!"