“You feel sick, Mist’ Tuttle?” Bojus inquired sympathetically, for his companion’s appearance was a little disquieting. “You feel bad?”
“Well, I do,” Tuttle admitted feebly. “I eat a hambone yestiddy that up and disagreed on me. I ain’t be’n feelin’ none too well all morning, if the truth must be told. The fact is, what I need right now—and I need it right bad,” he added—“it’s a little liquor.”
“Yes, suh; I guess so,” his friend agreed. “That’s somep’n ain’ goin’ hurt nobody. I be willin’ use a little myse’f.”
“You know where any is?”
“Don’t I!” the negro exclaimed. “I know whur plenty is, but the trouble is: How you an’ me goin’ git it?”
“Where is it?”
“Ri’ dow’ my cousin Mamie’ celluh. My cousin Mamie’ celluh plum full o’ Whi’ Mule. Man say he goin’ buy it off her but ain’ show up with no money. Early ’s mawn’ I say, ‘Mamie, gi’ me little nice smell o’ you’ nice whisky?’ No, suh! Take an’ fretten me with a brade-knife! Mad ’cause man ain’ paid ’er, I reckon.”
“Le’ss go on up there and ast her again,” Tuttle suggested. “She might be feelin’ in a nicer temper by this time. Me bein’ sick, and it’s Sunday and all, why, she ought to show some decency about it. Anyways, it wouldn’t hurt anything to jest try.”
“No, suh, tha’s so, Mist’ Tuttle,” the negro agreed with ready hopefulness. “If she say no, she say no; but if she say yes, we all fix fine! Le’ss go!”
They went up the street, walking rather slowly, as Mr. Tuttle, though eager, found his indisposition increased with any rapidity of movement; then they turned down an alley, followed it to another alley, and at the intersection of that with another, entered a smoke-coloured cottage of small pretensions, though it still displayed in a front window the card of a Red Cross subscriber to the “drive” of 1918.