The boy chewed his brown bread and drank his coffee; but in truth he saw
only his machine finished--that last something found out and added. He saw
it as it worked with beautiful smoothness; and over and above, as he chewed
his bread and drank his coffee, there was that delightful consciousness of
something bending over him and loving him. It would not have been better
in one of the courts of heaven, where the walls are set with rows of the
King of Glory's amethysts and milk-white pearls, than there, eating his
supper in that little room.
As they sat in silence there was a knock at the door. When it was opened
the small woolly head of a little nigger showed itself. She was a
messenger from Tant Sannie: the German was wanted at once at the
homestead. Putting on his hat with both hands, he hurried off. The
kitchen was in darkness, but in the pantry beyond Tant Sannie and her maids
were assembled.
A Kaffer girl, who had been grinding pepper between two stones, knelt on
the floor, the lean Hottentot stood with a brass candlestick in her hand,
and Tant Sannie, near the shelf, with a hand on each hip, was evidently
listening intently, as were her companions.
"What may be it?" cried the old German in astonishment. The room beyond
the pantry was the storeroom. Through the thin wooden partition there
arose at that instant, evidently from some creature ensconced there, a
prolonged and prodigious howl, followed by a succession of violent blows
against the partition wall.
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