Chester Frackshun was a tall, gaunt, pecan-faced young man; with a high-pitched voice and mincing manners. By a strange whim of inconsistent Fate, Lizzie was endowed with every masculine characteristic that Chester lacked; and Chester possessed many of the feminine traits that Lizzie could never hope to assume. These discrepancies, it would seem, welded the unusual bond of friendship existing between them. Chester depended on Lizzie with a feeling of childish trust; knowing that she would champion his weakness and timidity. And Lizzie was devoted to him because he relied on her protection, and because he amused her, and understood her humor as well.
Chester usually worked as cook on the passenger boats running across Lake Pontchartrain, up the Amite river, from New Orleans to the French Settlement. Lizzie had made a number of trips with him, working as chambermaid, getting small pay but having a “good time an’ plenny fun laughin’ at de Cajuns.”
Sometimes Chester would take a position as cook with a large family in the city; and frequently managed to have Lizzie with him, doing odd jobs and making the time pass merrily while it lasted. They shared many humorous experiences, and their retelling of them was always a feature of any gathering where they happened to be present.
Lizzie was dressed in a severely plain gray woolen dress, the tight-fitting basque spanning her uncorseted luxuriance like a huge bandage about to give way under the pressure. Her head was bare, and her hair arranged in innumerable little plaits wound with shoestrings. Chester wore a stiff-bosomed pink shirt, with a celluloid collar; an ill-fitting piqué vest, frayed and yellow with age; and a purple cravat decorated with a splendid blue glass ball, which declared itself a lady’s hatpin rescued to serve a more eccentric purpose. His clothes were of a light blue shade; and his shoes, orange yellow.
As they came into the room, Lizzie began singing lustily:
“Tell your mother to hold her tongue,
She had a feller w’en she was young....”
Stopping abruptly, she called out: