Lost trumpet

i5o
THE LOST TRUMPET
twinge of satisfaction at hearing a mingled canine
and piscine gasp from behind me. Then the band
struck up again a Negroid air to which it appeared
an alcoholic addict arrested at the cretin stage of
mental development had set words in pseudo-
English, and Pelagueya and I were dancing to the
strains of “A Night with YouT
She said : “Well, Anton ?”
I said : “Not well at all. If you were not a
princess and I not a dragoman, but two negroes in a
forest of the Congo, with a moon above us instead
of that lard-like face that conducts the orchestra ”
“Fun it would be ! Anton, I know! Let us go
there—to the Congo. Equip a caravan and set out
through the Sahara. Go south till we strike Timbuctoo
and then down that River ”
“All so that we may dance in the Congo ?”
“It would be great fun. You dance very well
still, if a little like a Negro who has been at a mis¬
sionary school . . .”
She stopped in that remark, for her words and
the tom-tom beat that underlay the frills and adorn¬
ments of the foolish music had made me for a moment
forget my self-admired composure. She looked up
in such fashion as I do not care to write of.
“Oh, Anton—sometimes you forget the mission
school!”
And at her words I instantly remembered it,
seeing the curious glances cast on us. We jogged and
dipped and stamped and slithered with decorous
seemliness. Pelagueya sighed, sweetly, whimsically.