The next day, being Sunday and a dull day, Skeeter found it both convenient and comfortable to remain in bed and pretend to be severely injured by his automobile accident. He planned to spend the day in bed, and slip out at night and carry the rabbit-foot back to the dresser-drawer in Miss Virginia’s room. But about ten o’clock the road commissioner called upon Skeeter, expressed his great regret at the automobile accident and told Skeeter he had come to settle for the damage that had been done.
“I don’t want any lawsuit, Skeeter. It takes a lot of time, and it takes a lot of money which has to be paid to the lawyers and the courts. We’ll fix this up between ourselves.”
“Dat suits me,” Skeeter told him.
“I’ll have your automobile repaired, put in perfect condition, painted and polished and fixed like new. Besides that I’ll give you one hundred dollars.”
With these words, he laid the money out on his knee, one hundred dollars in one-dollar bills.
Skeeter sat up, reached for the money, and thrust it under his pillow on the bed.
“Whar do I sign?” he grinned.
The smiling commissioner indicated the dotted line, Skeeter inscribed his name with a flourish, and before that gentleman was out of the yard Skeeter was kicking off the bed covers, preparing to dress and go out.
“Dis here is my lucky day,” he announced to his immortal soul.
About this time, Orren Randolph Gaitskill, returning from Sunday-school, met Little Bit who had been waiting for him at the corner for an hour. The two boys played around the streets for a while, then wandered aimlessly down the alley and into a vacant place in the rear of the Gaitskill store. There they found something which interested them very much.
It was a discarded advertisement.
A piece of cardboard, life-size, represented a big, grinning negro man. Both arms were folded across his chest and he was hugging a brand of cured meat called the Hallelujah Ham to his bosom while his great mouth was wide-spread in a toothsome grin of anticipation over its sugar-cured sweetness. Having served its purpose, this cardboard man had been tossed upon the trash heap to be carted away. Org and Little Bit beat the trash man to it and regarded it as a great possession.
They carried the thing to the corner of the street and set it up in the middle of the alley.
A negro woman passed, humming a tune. When she saw the big negro, she jumped to one side with loud bawl:
“My Gawd! Who you tryin’ to skeer?”
When she saw it was merely a cardboard standing up, she went laughing down the street.
“This is our lucky day, Little Bit,” Org chuckled. “We can have a heap of fun with this thing. There is plenty of fun scaring people if they don’t get mad and fight you afterwards.”
“Niggers don’t fight when dey is skeart,” Little Bit said. “Dey runs.”
“But we can’t play with this to-day,” Org said virtuously, recalling his recent Sunday-school instructions. “This is the Sabbath of the Lord and this big negro man ought to rest on this day. We’ll take him up to my house and lay him down in the stable so he can rest.”
“Restin’ time an’ Sonday shore sounds good to a nigger,” Little Bit giggled. “Even dis here paper pasteboard man is a-grinnin’.”
But this was not a day of rest at the Gaitskill home. They were arranging to give a great dinner that evening at which would be announced the engagement of Miss Virginia Gaitskill and Captain Kerley Kerlerac.
All day long Hopey Prophet, famous cook, was preparing that dinner, Dazzle Zenor was helping in the kitchen, Mustard Prophet was errand boy, Skeeter Butts was slipping in and out of Hopey’s cabin in the yard, seizing such opportunities as he could find to discuss with Mustard the return of the rabbit-foot.
Org was called in and impressively informed that his beautiful sister was engaged to Captain Kerlerac and the announcement would be made that evening; that he would not be permitted to be at the dinner because he had to be corrected seventeen times at an ordinary meal, and this occasion was so extraordinary that he was eliminated.
“I don’t care—I’m glad I’m out of it,” Org growled. “Gince didn’t ask me nothing about her business and I’m not going to help her through. Let old Gince go and get herself engaged. Little Bit says that Cap’n Kerley is a easy boss.”
“What I want you to do is to be a good boy all day and stay around the house,” Mrs. Gaitskill requested.
“I’ll promise not to leave this place all day,” Org said. “There’s nothin’ doing on Sunday nohow.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Gaitskill said, much relieved by the promise. “If you are very good, I’ll promise to do something very nice for you.”
“Will you lemme have a party and invite Little Bit?” Org asked.
“Oh, dear! I can’t promise what I will do just now,” Mrs. Gaitskill smiled.
“Say!” Org exclaimed, struck by a sudden thought. “Don’t I get anything to eat out of this?”
“Certainly. But you’ll have to wait until the others have eaten.”
“Is Little Bit in on the eats, too?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll be good,” Org announced.
And he kept his promise. He and Little Bit played in the stable all day long. About dark it pleased his fancy to carry his cardboard negro man to the house where there could be no danger of anyone stealing it. At first he thought he would take it up to his own room, then he decided to store it in a room which Colonel Gaitskill called his “office,” for he knew that no one would enter that room that night.
The Gaitskill home was arranged in this fashion: Entering the front door a guest stepped into the reception room in the rear of which was a staircase leading to the bed-rooms above. On the left of the reception room was the dining-room, behind that the butler’s pantry and the kitchen. In the rear of the staircase was a back hall with a flight of back stairs leading to the bed-rooms above. On the right of the reception room was the drawing-room, and in the rear of that, entered by folding doors, was what Mrs. Gaitskill called a library, and Miss Virginia called a den, and Colonel Gaitskill called his office.
In this “office” Org set up his cardboard man, knowing that Gaitskill never entered this room on Sunday, and that no guest would be admitted to it that night.
As Org came out of the room, he was captured by Dazzle Zenor, who conducted him to his room, ordered him to bathe, and superintended his dressing. Then she dismissed him with instructions not to leave the house and hastened to assist Miss Virginia with her toilet.
Orren sneaked down to the dining-room and gazed with awe at the wonderfully picturesque table; boylike, he began to seek what he might devour. There was nothing good to eat on the table yet, nothing on the sideboard. He pulled open a door in the sideboard, and found far back a cut-glass dish full of candies.
“Oo-oo!” he exclaimed. “Candy mints! They put ’em way back here to hide ’em from me!” and he filled his pockets.
Then he smuggled Little Bit up-stairs to his room to keep him company, and showed him the candy mints.
“Dat looks good to me,” the little negro said.
“I bet it’ll make our mouths run water to eat ’em. When eatin’ time comes, us is gwine expe’unce joy.”
“We’ll lay ’em on this table till everybody goes to eating down-stairs,” Org said.
There were some Tickfall notables at that dinner.
There was Dr. Sentelle, clergyman, a hang-over from Civil War times, an unreconstructed rebel, a cripple since Antietam, whose voice was music, whose speech was eloquence, and every word a caress; whose face was beautiful, written all over with the literature of experience. There was John Flournoy, who had served forty years as sheriff of the Parish, a man with the physical frame of an ox, the strength of Samson, a mouth like a bear trap, and the gentle heart of a woman—the little children followed him on the streets. There was Judge Haddan, a pale, sickly man with a weak voice, trembling hands, and the stooped shoulders of the student; but his head was massive and Websterian, his eyes glowed like the eyes of some jungle beast, and no man within the borders of the State commanded more respect as a lawyer and a jurist. There was Colonel Gaitskill, the host, serene, powerful, with his snow-white beard and hair, his face glowing like an alabaster vase with a lamp in it, such a man as one beholds once in a lifetime and remembers forever. And around these a bevy of women and girls who had known these men since their babyhood.
And there was the girl of the evening, Miss Virginia Harwick Gaitskill, descendant of a long line of beautiful women and handsome men, her skin like the faint iridescence of pearls, her eyes like cornflower sapphires, her hair like cobweb, thick and wavy, colored like the heart of a ripe chestnut burr, her whole face like pearl and pomegranate and peachbloom, with the amber nimbus above it always from that soft brown hair, her laughter light and happy like a Sicilian shepherd’s reed, and her heart like oil on salt sea-water—all the beauties of the world moving, circling, advancing, retreating, but smoothing out all ruffled surfaces and stilling the storm!
And Captain Kerley Kerlerac, such a man as every mother wants her son to be that he might fill her heart and satisfy her love completely—but it is customary to ignore the man in a case like this, or dismiss him with faint praise.
The dinner was about half finished when Little Bit, in Orren’s room up-stairs, looked longingly at the candy mints upon the little table and remarked:
“All dem eaters down dar makes me feel hongry.”
“Me, too. Less eat our candy mints,” Org suggested.
“I’ll bet dey’ll make my mouf water when I gits ’em inside,” Little Bit chuckled. “My mouf is been waterin’ jes’ to look at ’em.&rdqu............