"Not a thing. Haven't even seen him. None of us have."
"There goes Rad, I wonder if he's seen him."
"No, or he'd have mentioned it to me. Hey, Rad," Tom called to the colored man, "what are you going to do?"
"Whitewash de back fence, Massa Tom. It's in a mos' disrupted state ob disgrace. I'se jest natchally got t' whitewash it."
"All right, Rad, and when you get through come back here. I've got another job for you."
"A'right, Massa Tom, I shorely will," and Rad limped off with his pail of whitewash, and the long-handled brush.
It may have been fate that sent Andy Foger along the rear road a little later, and past the place where Eradicate was making the fence less "disrupted." It may have been fate or Andy may have just been sneaking along to see if he could overhear anything of Tom's plans--a trick of which he was frequently guilty. At any rate, Andy walked past where Eradicate was whitewashing. The colored man saw the red-haired lad coming and murmured:
"Dere's dat no 'count white trash! I jest wish Massa Tom was here now. He'd jest natchally wallop Andy," and Eradicate moved his longhandled brush up and down, as though he were coating the Foger lad with the white stuff.
As it happened, Eradicate was putting some of the liquid on a particularly rough spot in the fence, a spot low down, and this naturally made the handle of his brush stick out over the sidewalk, and at this moment Andy Foger got there.
"Here, you black rascal!" the lad angrily exclaimed. "What do you mean by blocking the sidewalk that way? It's against the law, and I could have you arrested for that."