“’Tain’t no good fer you to howl, Happy. Skeeter will fotch back yo’ little boy as quick as he kin git him, an’ we done got dat yuther woman’s brat fer s’curity.”
’“Tain’t nothin’ like habin’ yo’ own chile!” Happy wailed.
“Hey!” Hopey bellowed. “Sup up dis hot tea now an’ stop blubberin’!”
Skeeter had heard enough to know that the women did not have the child in the kitchen with them. He stepped around the house, tiptoed up to the porch, and lo! the boy lay asleep upon the bed just inside of the open door.
“Dat gits me straight in dis bizzness,” Skeeter grinned, as he slipped into the room and lifted the sleeping child. “I’m shorely got de Lawd wid me dis time. Nobody cain’t git dis pickaninny away from me widout plenty compelment!”
He deposited Shinny in the machine, spun down the street to the Bone eating-house, and once more stopped his car a block away.
“Shin’s got killin’ on de brain,” he muttered. “I’s gwine spy aroun’ a little befo’ I crowds him too close.”
Shin Bone was seated alone in the middle of his restaurant which was lighted up like a circus. He was lining out a church hymn, singing it at the top of his voice, and beating the time with a large tin coffee pot. He had pounded the table with his tin pot until it was a certainty that it would never serve its original purpose again.
“I guess little Ready is sleepin’ in de back room,” Skeeter remarked, as he slipped around to the rear.
He entered the open door and found the child lying upon the bed which was usually occupied by Shin Bone’s real son. Carefully lifting the little fellow, Skeeter walked quickly down the street, grinning exultantly as he listened to Shin Bone’s raucous voice singing:
“O heaben’s mighty nigh, Mighty nigh, mighty nigh, Ef you got a eye fer visions In de sky, in de sky!”
When young Ready lay beside Shin Bone’s boy in the automobile, Skeeter felt almost happy.
“It ’pears to me like I got dis job by de tail wid a downhill pull!” he exulted, as he started his machine and drove away from Dirty-Six with a lighter heart.
“I’se gwine take dese babies to my cabin,” he decided. “Dem squallin’ womans kin wait fer deir brats--dey don’t ’preciate whut I done fer ’em nohow. But Marse John might git peeved up ef he missed dis automobile an’ I cain’t affode to git in no lawsuit wid de cotehouse.”