“Great guns, this is a go!” says
the king; and both of them looked pretty sick and
tolerable silly. They stood there a-thinking
and scratching their heads a minute, and the duke
he bust into a kind of a little raspy chuckle, and
says:
“It does beat all how neat the niggers played
their hand. They let on to be sorry they
was going out of this region! And I believed
they was sorry, and so did you, and so did everybody.
Don’t ever tell me any more that a nigger
ain’t got any histrionic talent. Why, the
way they played that thing it would fool anybody.
In my opinion, there’s a fortune in ’em.
If I had capital and a theater, I wouldn’t want
a better lay-out than that—and here we’ve
gone and sold ’em for a song. Yes, and
ain’t privileged to sing the song yet.
Say, where is that song—that draft?”
“In the bank for to be collected. Where
would it be?”
“Well, that’s all right then, thank
goodness.”
Says I, kind of timid-like:
“Is something gone wrong?”
The king whirls on me and rips out:
“None o’ your business! You keep
your head shet, and mind y’r own affairs—if
you got any. Long as you’re in this town
don’t you forgit that—you hear?”
Then he says to the duke, “We got to jest swaller
it and say noth’n’: mum’s
the word for us.”
As they was starting down the ladder the duke he chuckles
again, and says:
“Quick sales and small profits! It’s
a good business—yes.”
The king snarls around on him and says:
“I was trying to do for the best in sellin’
’em out so quick. If the profits has turned
out to be none, lackin’ considable, and none
to carry, is it my fault any more’n it’s
yourn?”
“Well, they’d be in this house yet
and we wouldn’t if I could a got my advice
listened to.”
The king sassed back as much as was safe for him,
and then swapped around and lit into me again.
He give me down the banks for not coming and telling
him I see the niggers come out of his room acting that
way—said any fool would a knowed something
was up. And then waltzed in and cussed himself
awhile, and said it all come of him not laying late
and taking his natural rest that morning, and he’d
be blamed if he’d ever do it again. So
they went off a-jawing; and I felt dreadful glad I’d
worked it all off on to the niggers, and yet hadn’t
done the niggers no harm by it.
By and by it was getting-up time. So I
come down the ladder and started for down-stairs;
but as I come to the girls’ room the door was
open, and I see Mary Jane setting by her old hair
trunk, which was open and she’d been packing
things in it—getting ready to go to England.
But she had stopped now with a folded gown in her
lap, and had her face in her hands, crying.
I felt awful bad to see it; of course anybody would.
I went in there and says:
