“Dah yo’ gits me, Mistah Richud.” He shook his white head. “’Ca’se why? ’Ca’se you asks me to unraffle de hardest knot de good Lawd evah tie up. Does anybody know, Mistah Richud, why a woman’d do dis-heah,” he waved a hand dramatically, “rathe ’n dat-dere?” His hand moved between the two imaginary situations. “Mrs. Wells, she sez we was a-sprayin’ too much. She sez we’d been a-killin’ grubs for so many yeahs that dey’d done forget how to get borned, mebbe. In co’se I tol’ her diff’rent, an’ Mistah Buttuhwo’th nearly get down an’ prayed to her about it, but she ’lowed she’d give dem pore trees a rest. Dey wa’n’t no ’jections, fah as I could observe, from de niggahs what had de sprayin’ job! Hyah! Hyah! Pow’ful sympathizin’ dey was to dem pore trees! Hyah! Hyah!... Well, Mistah Buttuhwo’th, he says de nex’ crop would be all bug-ged, an’ dey was all bug-ged; an’ he says de nex’ crop ’ud be buggeder an’, sho’ ’nuf, dey was buggeder!”
“But couldn’t they be sprayed again and put into shape?”
“Puffekly! Puffekly! Dat’s ’xactly what Mistah Hopkins did who bought ’em. But Mrs. Wells ’low’d dat after all her kindness she wouldn’t have nothin’ mo to do with trees what was as ongrateful as dem trees. An’ don’t yo’ think yo’se’f, Mistah Richud, dat it was kind o’ low-down onery o’ dem trees? Hyah! Hyah!”
“But I suppose Mrs. Wells got a good price for the orchard.” Richard tried to give George Alexander a chance to make up for his indirect criticism.
“Nuffin’ to say, Mistah Richud,” George Alexander assured him solemnly. “I’s got a mudder an’ a fahder an’ a whole pa’sel progenitohs waitin’ up dah,” he pointed piously above, “an’ dey see me gettin’ near de point o’ followin’ along, an’ meetin’ up wid ’em; but, Mistah Richud, if I opens my mouth on de sale-price ob dat o’cha’d my talk would be so blasphemious dat I’d sho’ have to dispoint dem people up dah!”
Richard thought he would be on safe ground to ask about the grapes.
“Po’rly, Mistah Richud, po’rly,” George Alexander pulled a long face. “Not ’nuff blue-stone. A spray what’s all water, I says, ain’t no spray ’tall.... It’s a mighty good thing us black folks is all rich.”
There was a joke here, no doubt, thought Richard. George Alexander’s expressionless face seemed to be waiting for the “interlocutor” to bring the end-man out.
“Well,” asked Richard good-naturedly, “what’s the answer, Mr. Bones?”
“Ya-as,” George Alexander drew in a deep, satisfied breath, “we’s all right. If anything ebber happens to de Wellses, we’s fixed.”