He held the heavy canvas bag tied with a rawhide string.
Two hours later, Pap Curtain and Mustard Prophet, sons of sorrow, reach the pinnacle of happiness. Clothed in new garments, smoking cigars, rattling money in their pockets, they sat down in a banker’s five-thousand-dollar automobile, the owner at the steering-wheel, and started their journey back to Tickfall and the old folks at home.
Mustard Prophet, responsive as mercury to the least chill in the atmosphere or the slightest increase in the warmth of fortune’s sunshine, began to expand:
“Marse Tom, I shore hopes you’ll take better keer of de rest of yo’ dollars dan you did of dis bag of money. ’Twus a powerful hard day’s wuck fer me when I got it back for you!”
No answer from Colonel Gaitskill. The miles sped by.
Then Mustard asked, with as much curiosity as if he had been gone thirty years instead of less than three days:
“Marse Tom, is Hopey livin’ yit?”
“Yes.”
“I bet dat nigger wife of mine makes ’miration over dese here fine clothes I’m got on.”
Silence again, then a shout from both negroes: