CHAPTER VI.
CRABS, BOYS, AND A BOAT-WRECK.
That Saturday morning was a sad one for poor Dick Lee.
His mother, the previous night, carefully locked up his elegant apparel, the gift of Mr. Dabney Kinzer. It was done after Dick was in bed; and, when daylight came again, he found only his old clothes by the bedside.
It was a hard thing to bear, no doubt; but Dick had been a bad boy on Friday. He had sold his fish instead of bringing them home, and then had gone and squandered the money on a brilliant new red necktie.
"Dat's good 'nuff for me to wear to meetin'," said Mrs. Lee, when her eyes fell upon the gorgeous bit of cheap silk. "Reckon it won't be wasted on any good-for-nuffin boy. I'll show ye wot to do wid yer fish. You' a-gettin' too mighty fine, anyhow."
Dick was disconsolate for a while; but his humility took the form of a determination to go for crabs that day, mainly because his mother had long since set her face against that tribe of animals.
"Dey's a wasteful, 'stravagant sort ob fish," remarked Mrs. Lee, in frequent explanation of her dislike. "Dey's all clo'es and no body, like some w'ite folks I know on. I don't mean de Kinzers. Dey's all got body nuff."
And yet that inlet had a name and reputation of its own for crabs. There was a wide reach of shallow water, inside the southerly point at the mouth, where, over several hundred acres of muddy flats, the depth varied from three and a half to eight feet, with the ebb and flow of the tides. That was a sort of perpetual crab-pasture; and there it was that Dick Lee determined to expend his energies that Saturday.
Very likely there would be other crabbers on the flats; but Dick was not the boy to object to that, provided none of them should notice the change in his raiment. At an early hour, therefore, Dab and Ford were preceded by their young colored friend, they themselves waiting for later breakfasts than Mrs. Lee was in the habit of preparing.