“I fergot that arrangement entirely, Skeeter,” he exclaimed. “Us wus gwine keep out of it. But dat won’t be so awful bad. Pap an’ me an’ our crowd will suppote de Hen-Scratch.”
“I’s sorry you done mint us, Figger,” Skeeter said sadly as he arose to go out for his evening meal. “But I freely admits dat you wus a fool an’ didn’t know no better.”
III
Skeeter slapped his derby hat on his head with such force that it popped like a tambourine in a minstrel show, and stalked angrily out of the room.
He moped down the street and sauntered slowly into the Shin Bone restaurant, sighing pitifully and feeling very sorry for himself.
A slovenly waitress suppressed a yawn, shuffled across the floor in slipshod shoes, and asked indifferently: “Whut’s yours?”
Skeeter waited a moment, hoping that his appearance of personified calamity would impress the woman and she would sympathize with his heart-break, but she looked like she was going to sleep while standing in the middle of the floor so he barked his order:
“I’s had so many troubles my appetite is plum’ gone, Pearly. Gimme a plate of gumbo soup, a dozen fried oystyers, a bait of fried catfish, two slices of apple pie an’ a glass of milk, a hunk of watermelon an’ a cup of coffee.”
He smoked cigarettes and thought up mean things to say to Figger Bush until the order was filled, then courted suffocation for twenty minutes by eating so rapidly that he did not take the time to breathe.
He had reached out for the pie and milk when Shin Bone, the proprietor of the eating-house, came from behind a screen and seated himself at the same table.