“I knowed you warn’t gwine be lib’ral wid yo’ gifts,” Figger said, as he reluctantly produced the holder and passed it to Skeeter. “I oughter lost dat prize befo’ I showed up here.”
“You kin git de good outen it by watchin’ me smoke it,” Skeeter snickered. “An’ ef we bust Pap’s plans about startin’ a saloon, mebbe I’ll let you smoke it a few times to keep yo’ feelin’s from gittin’ hurt.”
At that moment the door of the saloon opened and old Isaiah Gaitskill came across the room to where the two men sat at a table. Isaiah was one of the landmarks of Tickfall, withered and wrinkled and dry like the hull of a walnut, his gray hair fitting his head like a rubber cap, over eighty years of age, but as hard and active as a soldier.
“Ole fellers like you oughter be in bed, Isaiah,” Skeeter announced as he waved the visitor to a chair.
“Fellers nearly as ole as me is not only stayin’ up late but dey is figgerin’ ’bout gittin’ married,” Isaiah replied with a grin.
“Pap Curtain ain’t nigh as old as you,” Figger retorted.
“’Tain’t Pap I’s alludin’ to,” Isaiah answered. “It’s brudder Popsy Spout whut’s studyin’ mattermony.”
Many things had happened to those two young men in their variegated and adventurous careers, but nothing had ever happened to produce such a shock as Isaiah’s announcement. Figger uttered a startled exclamation, started to rise from his seat, then sank back with his chin in his collar and collapsed like a punctured tire. Skeeter Butts pawed the air in front of his face with both hands as if fighting off invisible insects; he made inarticulate noises in his throat, shut his teeth down so hard on his celluloid nickel-plated cigarette holder that he split it for two inches, and then exclaimed despairingly:
“Oh, whoosh!”
The sound was like the feeble exhaust of an automobile that is utterly worn out and broken down and never intends to be serviceable again.