"'Tain't nuthin'; no, 'tain't nuthin'. I jis' divided with ye," the fisherman insisted, shrilly.
"Oh, it is worth a dollar to drink this good buttermilk!"
Jerry lifted the cup, a shining silver mug, and turned it in the light. It was of an old pattern, with a quaint monogram on one side.
"This looks like an heirloom," she thought. "Why should a bear with cracked plates and iron knives and forks offer me a drink in a silver cup? There must be a story back of it. Maybe he's a nobleman in disguise. Well, the disguise is perfect. After all, it's as good as a novel to live in Kansas."
Jerry slowly sipped the drink as these thoughts ran through her mind. The meal was helping wonderfully to take the edge off of the tragedy of the morning. It would overwhelm her again later, but in this shady, restful solitude it slipped away.
She smiled down at the old man at the thought of him in a story. Him! But the smile went straight to his heart; that was Jerry's gift, making him drop his board tray and break the cracked plate in his confusion.
"Here's another quarter. That was my fault," Jerry insisted.
"Oh no'm, no'm! 'Tain't nobody's fault." The voice quavered as the scaly brown hand thrust back the proffered coin.
Jerry could not understand why this creature should refuse her money. Tipping, to her mind, covered all the obligations her class owed to the lower strata of the earth's formation.