“That's right too, Jimmy,” said Mr. Galloway. “Well, God bless her anyway for a fine lady!”
Had you, reader, enjoyed the advantage of living in our town and of knowing its customs, you would have understood at once what this last reference meant. You see, the Felsburgs, in their fine home, lived diagonally across the street from the little priest house behind the Catholic church. Mrs. Felsburg was distinguished for being a rigid adherent to the ritualistic laws of her people. Away from home her husband and her sons might choose whatever fare suited their several palates, but beneath her roof and at the table where she presided they found none of the forbidden foods.
On Fridays she cooked with her own hands the fish for the cold Shabbath supper and, having cooked them, she set them aside to cool. But always the finest, crispest fish of all, while still hot, was spread upon one of Mrs. Felsburg's best company plates and covered over with one of Mrs. Felsburg's fine white napkins, and then a servant would run across the street with it, from Mrs. Felsburg's side gate to the front door of the priest house, and hand it in to the dour-faced housekeeper with Mrs. Felsburg's compliments. And so that night, at his main meal of the day, Father Minor would dine on prime river perch or fresh lake crappie, fried in olive oil by an orthodox Jewess. Year in and year out this thing had happened once a week regularly. Probably it would not happen again. Father Minor's successor, whoever he might be, might not understand. Mr. Galloway nodded abstractedly, and for a little bit nothing was said.
The carriage bearing them twisted out of the procession, leaving a gap in it, and stopped in front of Doctor Lake's red-brick residence. The old doctor climbed down stiffly and, leaning heavily on his cane, went up the walk to his house. Next Mr. Galloway was dropped at his shabby little house, snug in its ambuscade behind a bushwhacker's paradise of lilac bushes; and pretty soon after that it was Sergeant Bagby's turn to get out. As the carriage slowed up for the third stop Judge Priest laid a demurring hand upon his companion's arm.
“Come on out to my place, this evenin', Jimmy,” he said, “and have a bite of supper with me. There won't be nobody there but jest you and me, and after supper we kin set a spell and talk over old times.”
The sergeant shook his whity-grey head in regretful dissent.
“I wish't I could, Judge,” he said, “but it can't be done—not to-night.”
“Better come on!” The judge's tone was pleading. “I sort of figger that there old nigger cook of mine has killed a young chicken. And she kin mix up a batch of waffle batter in less'n no time a-tall.”
“Not to-night, Billy; some night soon I'll come, shore. But to-night my wife is figurin' on company, and ef I don't show up there'll be hell to pay and no pitch hot.”
“Listen, Jimmy; listen to me.” The judge spoke fast, for the sergeant was out of the carriage by now. “I've got a quart of special licker that Lieutenant Governor Bosworth sent me frum Lexington. Thirty-two years old, Jimmy—handmade and run through a gum log. Copper nor iron ain't never teched it. And when you pour a dram of it out into a glass it beads up same ez ef it had soapsuds down in the bottom of it—it does fur a fact. There ain't been but two drinks drunk out of that quart.”