“Ol’ Eph ain’ here, at all, Mis’ Hopkins,” he told her gleefully. “Y’all jes’ thinks he is. He ain’ here, I’m tellin’ you.”
She shooed him, with fat hands. “Go ’long, Eph, you ol’ scamp,” she scolded.
“I’m tellin’ you,” he repeated. “Eph ain’ here. Ol’ Eph’s in de army, now. Ain’ old Eph no more; he’s a fine, stroppin’ boy big enough to cut de Dutch. A fixin’ tuh fight, Mis’ Hopkins. A fixin’ tuh fight!”
“Whut you tryin’ let out, anyhows?” she demanded. “You sayin’ somethin; or is you jes’ talkin’ th’ough yore hat?”
“I’m tellin’ you,” he chanted. “Eph’s in de army, now.”
But he did not lay bare his secret to her, even then. Eph knew white folks. He knew that Jim Forrest wouldn’t want it noised abroad that a nigger street singer was supporting his mother. And he kept his tongue in his head; but he exulted. He carried his old head high; and when he met on the street one day that Sergeant Hare who had refused him enlistment, Eph went into a fit of merriment that made the Sergeant think the old darky had gone witless.
“Dat man ’lowed he ’uz gwine keep me out o’ dis here war,” he boasted to Mis’ Hopkins next day. “But I showed him. Old Eph showed whut ’uz whut.”
“Yo’re crazy,” Mis’ Hopkins told him scornfully. “Git out o’ my way.”
Eph told his lawyer, the next week, to ask Jim’s mother to give them word of Jim; and when she wrote, two weeks later, that the boy had been admitted to an officer’s training camp, Eph danced on his bowed legs, and told Mis’ Hopkins loftily that she would have to step lively now.
“Howcome?” she demanded.