"Count up de bill, quick!" Ella hastened, putting a sixpence on the counter. "It a get dark."
"Frighten fo' duppies?" Poyer said, a suggestion of teasing and mockery in his voice.
Island bugaboo.... "Who, me?" Ella's eyes blazed, "I ain't frighten fo' de livin' much mo' de dead!"
"T'ink I is any cry-cry ooman, t'ink I is any cry-cry ooman—yo' lie!"
On the way back up the gap Ella felt unforgivingly warm in the temples at the very idea of Poyer's thinking she was afraid of ghosts. "Like I is any mamby-pamby ooman, like I ain't usta to takin' care o' meself."
Six days passed. Ella stuck a pig and corned the meat. The sapodillas ripened. Shaddocks—tropical grapefruits—filled donkey cart after donkey cart going through the gap to Eagle Hall Corner. Often as the sun rose showers fell. And then a visitor came—with a peg-step....
It was dark when he came. He was perspiring furiously. He was one of those black men whose faces present an onion-like sheen, and upon whose brow and flabby jaws little fester-bright pimples stand out with a plaguing glitter.
He met Ella by the side of the well, binding up the spurs of a pugnacious game cock.
"I shut up de shop," he said abruptly, "why don't yo' come an' buy from me any mo'?"
"Hey, wha' yo' t'ink o' dat? Wha' wuz I doin' befo' yo' come along? Yo' t'ink I was starvin'? I look like I is starved out? Look at me good! We had plenty shops befo' yo' come along, bo."