She had never
liked Dick too well; for he used to make faces at her and tease her
when he was a boy, and now he was a man there was something about
him--she could not tell what--that made her suspicious of him. It was
no small matter to get her over to his side.
The jet-black Africans know that gold never looks so well as on the
foil of their dark skins. Dick found in his trunk a string of gold
beads, such as are manufactured in some of our cities, which he had
brought from the gold region of Chili,--so he said,--for the express
purpose of giving them to old Sophy. These Africans, too, have a
perfect passion for gay-colored clothing; being condemned by Nature,
as it were, to a perpetual mourning-suit, they love to enliven it
with all sorts of variegated stuffs of sprightly patterns, aflame
with red and yellow. The considerate young man had remembered this,
too, and brought home for Sophy some handkerchiefs of rainbow hue,
which had been strangely overlooked till now, at the bottom of one of
his trunks. Old Sophy took his gifts, but kept her black eyes open
and watched every movement of the young people all the more closely.
It was through her that the father had always known most of the
actions and tendencies of his daughter.
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