With characteristic brusqueness, Smooth entirely disregarded the greeting.
“Come yere to me, little nigger!” he said out of one corner of his lips, at the same time fixing a lowering stare upon Jeff. Then, as Jeff still stood, filled with sudden misgivings: “Come yere quick w'en I speaks! Want me to come on in dat yard after you?”
Jeff was conscious of no act of wrongdoing toward Smooth Crumbaugh. With Jeff, discretion was not only the greater part of fighting valour but practically was all of it. Nevertheless, he was glad, as he obeyed the summons and, with a placating smile fixed upon his face, drew nearer the paling, that he stood on the sanctuary ground of a circuit judge's premises, and that a fence intervened between him and his truculent caller.
“Comm' right along,” he said with an affected gaiety.
Just the same, he didn't go quite up to the gate. He made his stand three or four feet inside of it, ready to jump backward or sidewise should the necessity arise.
“I'se feared I didn't heah you call de fus time,” stated Jeff ingratiatingly. “I wuzn't studyin' about nobody wantin' me—been wipin' off our ole mare. 'Sides, I thought you wuz down in Alabam', workin' on de ole P. and A. Road.”
“Num'mine dat!” said Smooth. “Jes' lis'en to whut I got to say.”
The hostile glare of his eye bored straight into Jeff, making him chilly in his most important organs. Smooth was part basilisk, but mainly hyena, with a touch of the man-eating tiger in his composition. “Little nigger,” he continued grimly, “I come th'ough dis lane on puppus' to tell you somethin' fur de good of yore health.”
“I's lis'enin',” said Jeff, most politely.
“Heed me clost,” bade Smooth; “heed me dost, an' mebbe you mout live longer. Who wuz you at de Fust Ward Cullid Baptis' Church wid last Sunday night? Dat's de fust question.”