“Whar did you git dis green-plush box, Skeeter?” Mustard asked at last.
“Ask Dazzle,” Skeeter wailed. “She knows—you know, too.”
“Whar you git yo’ green-plush box, Shin?” Mustard asked next, in a tone of superstitious consternation.
“About three weeks ago, ole Popsy Spout went out to yo’ house to spend de day. When he got back, he come in here an’ et, an’ he lef’ dis green box on de eatin’ table. He explavicated about it a little bit an’ said it b’longed to you!”
Mustard turned around with the righteous fury of Michel the archangel contending with the devil to “bring against him a railing accusation”—but, alas, Popsy had taken a hint from Skeeter’s recumbent attitude, and was stretched out upon a dining-table sound asleep.
The unexpected duplication of the rabbit-feet and the two boxes had the effect of relieving Skeeter’s pretended injuries to the extent that he was able to travel a little farther.
“Take me home, Mustard,” he wailed. “Lemme die at home in my own little cabin whut Marse John gib to me.”
Mustard quickly understood that what Skeeter really wanted was to get to some place where he could talk about the new complication in the matter of luck charms. He lifted Skeeter in his arms and carried him back to the wagon, leaving Popsy asleep upon the table, and leaving Dazzle and Hopey to find their own conveyance to their house in their own feet.
When Mustard and Skeeter had closed the door upon their conference in Skeeter’s cabin, Mustard laid the rabbit-foot on Skeeter’s knee.
“You got to take it back, brudder,” he said earnestly. “’Twon’t do fer us folks to steal Marse Tom’s rabbit-foot. Us is got to ack hones’.”