“Hi, you, Abe, cain’cha play a perkier chune? My cake dough am likely ter fall with me tryin’ to keep time ter sech a buried-an’ dug-up song. This yer cake air gotter be beat fas’ an’ stiddy so you jes’ change yo’ chune or quit playin’.”
“How kin I carry a fas’ chune when every time I draws out for wind I haster carry two, three gran’babies?” whined the old husband.
“Here, gimme that aircawjun!” exclaimed Sis Minerva, putting down her bowl of cake batter on the highboy out of reach of the many grandchildren. “I’ll mend it in no time. I done saved more’n a sheet or so o’ dat tangle-yo-foot fly paper an’ I boun’ it’ll stick fas’ as yo’ hide.” She produced the fly paper and mended the instrument while Josie and Teddy peered through the flowering geraniums on the homely, happy scene.
Teddy’s knock on the door silenced the noise of the grandchildren, but old Abe must finish his tune, explaining later with many apologies that it was “wuss ter quit in the middle of a chune than ter lay off befo’ a sneeze wa’ properly snuz.”
“Please go on with your tune,” begged Teddy.
“And don’t stop stirring your cake,” Josie insisted when Sis Minerva prepared to remove the yellow bowl to the lean-to. “Let me stir it for you. I know how, really and truly.”
She took the bowl from the old woman and, with a practiced hand, began a rhythmic beat that satisfied Sis Minerva her guest was no idle boaster.
“I smell ’possum roasting,” sniffed Teddy.
“Deed an’ you do, an’ sweet ’taters ’long with. I been a-fattenin’ dat ’possum fo’ nigh onter two months, not dat he wa’ no spindle shanks when I cotched him. De trouble am de chilluns done got so ’tached ter de animule I feel kinder like I’d done skun a gran’baby fo’ Chris’mus dinner. De smell of him a cookin’ air put heart in us all, an’ I reckons by de time we sets up to de table we won’t feel so like we’s a-eatin’ of kinfolks.”
“We done ruminated right smart ’bout whether we’d make a burnt offerin’ of de tame possum or my ol’ gander an’ I puts in a word fo’ de gander an’ cas’ my vote for de ’possum,” Sis Minerva explained. “You see dat ol’ gander air already so tough he cain’t git no tougher an’ de ’possum wa’ so fat he couldn’t git no fatter, so all things bein’ ekal we skun de ’possum.”