“Serves you right,” was Mandy's unfeeling reply. “If yo's so anxious to be a-totin' water, jes' yo' come along outside and tote some fo' Mandy.”
“I can't do no mo' carryin', Mandy,” protested Hasty. “I'se hurted in mah arm.”
“What hurt yo'?”
“Tiger.”
“A tiger?” exclaimed the women in unison.
“Done chawed it mos' off,” he declared, solemnly. “Deacon Elverson, he seed it, an' he says I's hurt bad.”
“Deacon Elverson?” cried the spinster. “Was Deacon Elverson at the circus?”
“He was in de lot, a-tryin' to look in, same as me,” Hasty answered, innocently.
“You'd better take Hasty into the kitchen,” said Douglas to Mandy, with a dry smile; “he's talking too much for a wounded man.”
Mandy disappeared with the disgraced Hasty, advising him with fine scorn “to get de tiger to chew off his laigs, so's he wouldn't have to walk no mo'.”