Chapter 10 Summary

One day, Janie is left alone in the store while most of the town goes to a ball game in Winter Park. A strange, imaginative young man wanders in, and they strike up a conversation. He tells her he got the place of the ball game mixed up and will have to wait for another ride to take him home. In the meantime, he offers to teach Janie how to play checkers, and then he laughs and protests when she cheats. Janie thinks here is someone who actually wants her to play—Jody had told her she did not have the brains for checkers and would not let her. After a while, the young man introduces himself as Vergible Woods, Tea Cake for short. Janie likes his sly grin, his lazy eyes and narrow waist. He sticks around while she closes up the...