“What’s she sayin’, Tim?”
“She’s jes p’intedly er-skinnin’ of Jack Cromby! ‘Oudacionest’ is the shortes’ word I’ve ketched. Go it, Aunt Tildy, I’m er bettin’ on yer! Whoopee-ee—!”
“Silence in court!” The master’s angry voice could be heard by the outsiders; and again the people at the window, gesticulating, turned on Tim, whose expostulations descended.
“Thass all right, gentlemen,—all right! I ain’t in the court ner on th’ earth ner in th’ heavens, ner in the waters unner th’—earth!” Tim made a dangerous lurch as he concluded, but swayed back into the perpendicular, while the crowd below held their breath. Then he straightened up and craned his neck over his neighbors’ heads, his sides shaking while he hammered on the ladder with his fist. The people below him were burning with curiosity and the judge grew impatient.
“How goes it, Tim?”
“Fine, Jedge! Come up!—Come up! Room at the top! Allus room at the top!”
“More room down here! What’s she sayin’ now?”
“Oh, gee! Oh, gee!—” Tim laid his head against the wall and joined loudly in the subdued laugh which rippled through the window. “This here is er circus right, Jedge! She says anybody says she ever took er pinch o’ snuff er wet er snuff-stick in her born days is er lower down houn’ th’n Jack Cromby, an’ Jack is th’ lowes’ she met in thirty years’ tradin’ with Niggers an’ po’ white trash! Jedge,—oh, Jedge!—” Tim held on with both hands for safety and let his laughter come. He finally ended it with a wild “Whoop-ee-ee!” which was followed by furious strokes of the master’s gavel and the usual pantomime in the window. These did not trouble Tim. “Jedge, you had oughter see Jack’s face now! Geminy criminy! He better keep outer the way of the ‘befo’ takin’’ man or git er patent on it quick! Hello, Jack!” He had thrust his head in the window. Somebody shook him and pushed it out. “All right, all-l-l right, gentlemen. Wouldn’t ’sturb nobody fer nothin’!”
Then the vibrant voice of Lawyer Thomas rang out clear and loud, and the attentive people in the square below needed no interpreter. His arraignment of the foreign firm which had slandered and humiliated one of the noble women of the county, his scathing denunciation of Jack Cromby, were things to talk about for years. Despite the gavel, applause followed his every rounded period, and to this applause Tim contributed each time a wild whoop that fairly split the air. When Lawyer Thomas closed with a flight of eloquence that caused the older people to mention Toombs and Linton Stevens, the applause from within was answered by cheers from without. At this climax Tim Broggins’s feet slipped, the outer cheers subsided suddenly into something like a gasp of horror, and Oglesby beat a hasty retreat. Fortunately, however, Tim lodged among the upper rounds of the ladder from which he disengaged himself only after five minutes of hard work. During his struggles to get back on the upper side of his ladder he was good-naturedly assisted by advice from the sympathetic crowd who knew a “Roman holiday” sacrifice by sight if not in terms.