t the window and asked, 'Why do you weep, fair one?' And she said,
'A wicked parent hath shut me up and I can't ever see my lover any
more.' So the fairy touched her head with her wand and told her to hang
her hair out of the window, and she did and it reached the ground, and
her lover, holding a rope ladder in one hand and playing the guitar and
singing with the other, climbed up by her hair and took her down on
the ladder and his big black horse was standing near, all booted and
spurred, and they rode away and lived happy ever after."

"How he goin' to clam' up, Lina," asked Billy, "with a rope ladder in
one hand and his guitar in the other?"

"I don't know," was the dignified answer. "That is the way it is told in
my fairy-tale book."

CHAPTER IX

CHANGING THE ETHIOPIAN

Billy and Jimmy were sitting in the swing.

"What makes your hair curl just like a girl's?" asked the latter. "It's
'bout the curliest hair they is."

"Yes, it do," was Billy's mournful response. "It done worry me 'mos'
to death. Ever sence me an' Wilkes Booth Lincoln's born we done try
ev'ything fer to get the curl out. They was a Yankee man came 'long las'
fall a-sellin' some stuff in a bottle what he call 'No-To-Kink' what he
say would take the kink outer any nigger's head. An' Aunt Cindy bought
a bottle fer to take the kink outer her hair an' me an' Wilkes Booth
Lincoln put some on us heads an' it jes' make mine curlier 'n what it
was already. I's 'shame' to go roun' folks with my cap off, a-lookin'
like a frizzly chicken. Miss Cecilia say she like it though, an' we's
engaged. We's goin' to git married soon's I puts on long pants."

"How long you been here, Billy?" asked the other boy.

"Well, I don't know perxactly, but I been to Sunday-School four times.
I got engaged to Miss Cecilia that very firs' Sunday, but she didn' know
it tell I went over to her house the nex' day an' tol' her 'bout it. She
say she think my hair is so pretty."

"Pretty nothin'," sneered his rival. "She jus' stuffin' you fuller 'n a
tick with hot air. It just makes you look like a girl. There's a young
lady come to spend a week with my mama not long ago and she put somepin'
on her head to make it right yeller. She left the bottle to our house
and I know where 't is. Maybe if you'd put some o' that on your head 't
would take the curl out."

"'Tain't nothin' a-goin' to do it no good," gloomily replied Billy.
"'Twould jest make it ye