“Yes’m, dat’s so,” Skeeter remarked without enthusiasm. “De fack is, I wus so busy dat I looked over de chance to ax you to marry me yistiddy, so I comed early dis mawnin’ to git in a word ’bout dat——”
“I tole de two yuther men dey wus losin’ time, an’ I tells you dat same word in eggsvance.”
“Of co’se, I don’t expeck you to fall right in wid dat suggestion,” Skeeter hastened to say. “But I wants you to know whut way I is leanin’.”
“You done took a notion to lean mighty sudden,” Dainty snapped. “You better lean de yuther way. You ain’t able to suppote no wife.”
“Whut’s de use of gittin’ able to suppote somepin you ain’t got?” Skeeter asked absently. “Us owns a hoss befo’ us buys any hoss-feed.”
The girl made no reply.
After a while Skeeter added another remark in an absent-minded way:
“Sometimes niggers buys a hoss an’ depen’s on stealin’ de hoss-feed. Dey always gits in trouble wid de white folks, too, when dey does dat.”
Instantly the girl’s manner changed completely. She bit her lips and her hands began to tremble. She looked as if dizziness and weakness were about to overcome her.
“When a nigger gits in trouble wid de white folks, it’s all off wid him,” Skeeter blundered on, his mind upon Hitch Diamond, and all unconscious of the impression he was making upon the girl beside him. “Sometimes luck is wid him an’ he kin run off, but most often he——”