“Jeff!” he called to a black shadow fidgeting about in the background.
“Yas, suh, Jedge; right yere!”
“Jeff, if your discernin' taste in handmade sour-mash whisky has permitted any of that last batch of liquor I bought to remain in the demijohn, I wish you'd mix me up a little toddy.”
Jeff snickered and mixed the toddy, mixing it more hurriedly then common, because he was anxious to be gone. It was Saturday night—a night dedicated by long usage to his people; and in Jeff's pocket was more ready money than his pocket had ever held before at any one time. Moreover, in the interval between dusk and dark, Jeff's wardrobe had been most grandly garnished. Above Mr. Clay Saunders' former blue serge coat a crimson necktie burned like a beacon, and below the creased legs of Mr. Otterbuck's late pearl-gray trousers now appeared a pair of new patent-leather shoes with pointed toes turned up at the ends like sleigh-runners and cloth uppers in the effective colors of the Douglas plaid and rows of 24-point white pearl buttons.
Assuredly Jeff was anxious to be on his way. He placed the filled toddy glass at the old judge's elbow and sought unostentatiously to withdraw himself.
“Jeff!” said the judge.
“Yas, suh.”
“I believe Mr. Jackson Berry did not see fit to return to the fair grounds this evenin' and protest the result of the third heat?”
“No, suh,” said Jeff; “frum whut I heared some of the w'ite folks sayin', he driv right straight home and went to bed and had a sort of a chill.”
“Ah-hah!” said the judge, sipping reflectively. Jeff fidgeted and drew nearer a halfopen window, listening out into the maple-lined street. Two blocks down the street he could hear the colored brass band playing in front of the Colored Odd Fellows Hall for a “festibul.”