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 faucille.”

A delicate melody and neatly done; yet the verse—­

     “Le deuxieme 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!”

In a shower of gibes and laughter the fiddle was fetched, and the Indian fighter seized the bow and drew a most distressful strain, singing in a whining voice: 

     “Come hearken to a bloody tale,
       Of how the soldiery
     Did murder men in Boston,
       As you full soon shall see. 
     It came to pass on March the fifth
       Of seventeen-seventy,
     A regiment, the twenty-ninth. 
       Provoked a sad affray!”

“Chorus!” shouted Captain Campbell, beating time: 

     “Fol-de-rol-de-rol-de-ray—­
     Provoked a sad affray!”

“That’s not in the song!” protested Colonel Claus, but everybody sang it in whining tones.

“Continue!” cried Captain Campbell, amid a burst of laughter.  And Claus gravely drew his fiddle-bow across the strings and sang: