“How he goin' to clam' up, Lina,” asked Billy, “with a rope ladder in one hand and his guitar in the other?”
“I don't know,” was the dignified answer. “That is the way it is told in my fairy-tale book.”
Billy and Jimmy were sitting in the swing.
“What makes your hair curl just like a girl's?” asked the latter. “It's 'bout the curliest hair they is.”
“Yes, it do,” was Billy's mournful response. “It done worry me 'mos' to death. Ever sence me an' Wilkes Booth Lincoln's born we done try ev'ything fer to get the curl out. They was a Yankee man came 'long las' fall a-sellin' some stuff in a bottle what he call 'No-To-Kink' what he say would take the kink outer any nigger's head. An' Aunt Cindy bought a bottle fer to take the kink outer her hair an' me an' Wilkes Booth Lincoln put some on us heads an' it jes' make mine curlier 'n what it was already. I's 'shame' to go roun' folks with my cap off, a-lookin' like a frizzly chicken. Miss Cecilia say she like it though, an' we's engaged. We's goin' to git married soon's I puts on long pants.”
“How long you been here, Billy?” asked the other boy.
“Well, I don't know perxactly, but I been to Sunday-School four times. I got engaged to Miss Cecilia that very firs' Sunday, but she didn' know it tell I went over to her house the nex' day an' tol' her 'bout it. She say she think my hair is so pretty.”
“Pretty nothin',” sneered his rival. “She jus' stuffin' you fuller 'n a tick with hot air. It just makes you look like a girl. There's a young lady come to spend a week with my mama not long ago and she put somepin' on her head to make it right yeller. She left the bottle to our house and I know where 't is. Maybe if you'd put some o' that on your head 't would take the curl out.”
“'Tain't nothin' a-goin' to do it no good,” gloomily replied Billy. “'Twould jest make it yeller 'n what 'tis now. Won't I be a pretty sight when I puts on long pants with these here yaller curls stuck on topper my head? I'd 'nuther sight ruther be bal'headed.”
“Bennie Dick's got 'bout the kinkiest head they is.”
Bennie Dick was the two-year-old baby of Mrs. Garner's cook, Sarah Jane.
“It sho' is,” replied Billy. “Wouldn't he look funny if he had yaller hair, 'cause his face is so black?”