ain.

"Too many divo'ces in dis country now, Persimmon," he moralized.

"Well, whut's de cause uv 'em?" asked the Persimmon, suddenly bringing
his protruding yellow eyes around on the sleight-of-hand performer.

Jim Pink was slightly taken aback; then he said:

"'Spicion; nothin' but 'spicion."

"Yeah, 'spicion," growled the Persimmon; "'spicion an' de husban'
leadin' a irreg'lar life."

Jim Pink looked at his companion, curiously.

"The husban'--leadin' a irreg'lar life?"

"Yeah,"--the Persimmon nodded grimly,--"the husban' comin' home at
onexpected hours. You know whut I means, Jim Pink."

Jim Pink let his pebble fall and lowered the fore legs of his chair
softly to the ground.

"Now, look heah, Persimmon, you don' want to be draggin' no foreign
disco'se into yo' talk heah befo' Mr. Siner an' Parson Ranson."

The Persimmon rose deliberately.

"All I want to say is, I drapped off'n de matrimonial tree three times
a'ready, Jim Pink, an' I think I feels somebody shakin' de limb ag'in."

The old negro preacher rose, too, a little behind Jim Pink.

"Now, boys! boys!" he placated. "You jes think dat, Persimmon."

"Yeah," admitted Persimmon, "I jes think it; but ef I b'lieve ever'thing
is so whut I think is so, I'd part Jim Pink's wool wid a brickbat."

Parson Ranson tried to make peace, but the Persimmon spread his hands in
a gesture that included the three men. "Now, I ain't sayin' nothin'," he
stated solemnly, "an' I ain't makin' no threats; but ef anything
happens, you-all kain't say that nobody didn' tell nobody about
nothin'."

With this the Persimmon walked to the gate, let himself out, still
looking back at Jim Pink, and then started down the dusty street.

Mr. Staggs seemed uncomfortable under the Persimmon's protruding yellow
stare, but finally, when the roustabout was gone, he shrugged, regained
his aplomb, and remarked that some niggers spent their time in studyin'
'bout things they hadn't no info'mation on whatever. Then he strolled
off up the crescent in the other direction.

All this would have made fair minstrel patter if Peter Siner had shared
the white conviction that every emotion expressed in a negro's patois is
humorous. Unfortunately, Peter was too close to the negroes to hold such
a tenet. He knew this quarrel was none the less rancorous for having
been couched in the queer circumlocution of black folk. And behind it
all shone the background of racial promiscuity out of which it s