“You an’ me bofe blowed up suckers, Skeeter,” Shin said in tragic tones. “Our bizzness is bum an’ busted.”
“It’s powerful bad, Shinny,” Skeeter agreed.
“Badder dan you think, Skeeter,” Shin said. “Pap an’ Figger is shore to be elected.”
“How does you dope dat out?” Skeeter asked, panting for breath.
“It lines up dis way,” Shin informed him. “Ginny Babe Chew is runnin’ her petticoat pol’tics fer presidunt. All of Pap’s follerers is sinners in de sight of de Lawd, an’ Ginny Babe Chew is done pronounced on deir sins copious an’ frequent, so Pap an’ his crowd hates her. In dat case, Mustard Prophet ain’t gwine git as many votes as he oughter had because Ginny Babe is runnin’ an’ she’ll git her voters from Mustard’s crowd. Of co’se, when de high-brows splits up deir vote, Pap an’ Figger will snow ’em over an’ got in solid.”
Skeeter felt a sudden weakness in his knees and sat down forcibly on the top of the table. Whereupon he felt considerable moisture in the vicinity of his coat-tail and sprang up to find that he had seated himself upon his slice of watermelon.
“By jacks!” he exclaimed dramatically. “Figger is done ruint my bizzness an’ I done ruint my pants!”
“Ef I wus you, I’d git rid of ’em bofe,” Shin suggested, as Skeeter walked out of the restaurant, wiping the moisture from his trousers with his handkerchief.
When Skeeter had gone, Shin found that the slice of watermelon had not been completely crushed and was not entirely unedible, so he drew himself up to the table and thankfully ate the uninjured part.
“Ef Skeeter wusn’t such a lightweight, dis whole chunk would hab been sp’iled,” he grinned.
He felt better after eating the melon until he suddenly recalled that Skeeter had left the eating-house without paying for his meal.
When Skeeter was outside of the restaurant, he promptly forgot his trousers and started for his home in a trot. He went up the long hill toward the Flournoy place like a brown shadow passing through the darkness, threw open the door of a little shed and seized the crank of his “flivver.”
A moment later he was out in the public highway, speeding through the night toward the Nigger-Heel plantation, on which Mustard Prophet was the overseer.
He found Mustard sitting on the porch of his house, shirtless and barefooted, smoking a vile corncob pipe.