CHAPTER II
1.
The following morning the Wildcat gorged himself on a ponderous breakfast. "Sho' is noble ham. Yo' sho' is de grandes' cook whut is. Wondeh how come ol' Honey Tone neveh 'spressed himse'f about yo'?"
"'At niggah neveh wuz home enough to git 'quainted."
The Wildcat looked sidewise at the cook. "Last night I meets up wid a boy in de barber shop whut knows Honey Tone pussonal. He says 'at triflin' uplifteh claims to bein' single—claims he neveh had no wife."
The culinary Amazon picked up a frying pan and brought it down on the top of the range with a resounding bang. "He claims, does he? Wunst Ah gits mah hooks in 'at nigger's head, all he claims is funeral benefits!"
The Wildcat suggested that Honey Tone was probably far, far away and established as the centre of another family circle. The cook reacted nobly.
He waited until the avoirdupois cyclone had cooled off. Something in the cook's energetic rage suggested the activities of the Wildcat's former landlady, Cuspidora Lee, from whom he had occasionally borrowed tobacco money. He determined to visit his former boarding house and renew his financial relations.
"You has my sympathy bofe ways," he said to the cook. "Yo' is married up wid a no-account triflin' yellow uplifteh. Is he wid you, you is mis'able, an' is he A.W.O.L. yo' is twice 'at much. Wuz I you, when you meets up wid him I'd bleed him by han'. But don' you grieve. Neveh min'. Some day yo' meets up wid him.... Den yo' pays him back."
2.