"He says the coloured people, Aunt Gary; all of them. It is only the coloured people."
"Hear her!" said my aunt. "Now she would rather entertain them, I don't doubt, than the best company that could be gathered of her own sort."
I certainly would. Did I not think with joy at that very minute of the words, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the
least of these, ye have done it unto me?" I knew what guest would be among my poor despised company. But I said not a word.
"Daisy," said my aunt, "you must be under a mistake; you must let me see what your father says. Why, to give all these hundreds an entertainment, it would cost—have you any idea what it would cost?"
I had not indeed. But my father's letter had mentioned a sum which was to be the limit of my expenditure; within which I was to be unlimited. It was a large sum, amounting to several hundreds, and amply sufficient for all I could wish to do. I told my aunt.
"Well!" she said, twisting herself round to the fire, "if your father has money to fling about like that, I have of course no more to say."
Miss Pinshon looked up again at me. Those black eyes were always the same; the eyelids never drooped over them. "What are you going to do, Daisy?" she asked.
Truly I did not know, yet. I gave my aunt a note to the overseer from my father, which I begged her to forward; and ran away to take sweet counsel with myself.
I had had some little experience of such an entertainment in the strawberry festival at Melbourne. I remembered that good things to eat and drink were sure to be enjoyed, and not these only, but also a pretty and festive air thrown about these things. And much more would this be true among the beauty-loving, and luxurious-natured children of the tropics, than with the comparatively barbarous Celtic blood. But between entertaining thirty and seven hundred there was a difference. And between the season of roses and fruits, and the time of mid-winter, even