Flags in the Dust Read Online Free PDF

entered, but they dropped the theme of conversation and made him welcome.
    “Ef it aint Brother Strother,” they said in unison. “Come in, Brother Strother. How is you?”
    “Po’ly, ladies; po’ly,” Simon replied. He doffed his hat and unclamped his cigar stub and stowed it away in the hat-band. “I’se had a right smart mis’ry in de back. Is y’all kep’ well?”
    “Right well, I thank you, Brother Strother,” the visitor replied. Simon drew a chair up to the table, as he was bidden.
    “Whut you gwine eat, Brother Strother?” the cook demanded hospitably. “Dey’s party fixin’s, en dey’s some col’ greens en a little sof’ ice-cream lef’ fum dinner.”
    “I reckon I’ll have a little ice-cream en some of dem greens, Sis’ Rachel,” Simon replied. “My teef aint much on party doin’s no mo’.” The cook rose with majestic deliberationand waddled across to a pantry and reached down a platter. She was one of the best cooks in Jefferson: no mistress dared protest against the social amenities of Rachel’s kitchen.
    “Ef you aint de beatin’es’ man!” the first guest exclaimed. “Eatin’ ice-cream at yo’ age!”
    “I been eatin’ ice-cream sixty years,” Simon said. “Whut reason I got fer quittin’ now?”
    “Dat’s right, Brother Strother,” the cook agreed, placing the dish before him. “Eat yo’ ice-cream when you kin git it. Jes’ a minute en I’ll——Here, Meloney,” she interrupted herself as a young light negress in a smart white apron and cap entered, bearing a tray of plates containing remnants of edible edifices copied from pictures in ladies’ magazines and possessing neither volume nor nourishment, with which the party had been dulling its palates against supper, “git Brother Strother a bowl of dat ’ere ice-cream, honey.”
    The girl clashed the tray into the sink and rinsed a bowl at the water tap while Simon watched her with his still little eyes. She whipped the bowl through a towel with a fine show of derogatory carelessness, and with her chin at a supercilious angle she clattered on her high heels across the kitchen, still under Simon’s unwinking regard, and slammed a door behind her. Then Simon turned his head.
    “Yes, ma’am,” he repeated, “I been eatin’ ice-cream too long ter quit at my age.”
    “Dey wont no vittle hurt you ez long ez you kin stomach ’um,” the cook agreed, raising her saucer to her lips again. The girl returned and with her head still averted she set the bowl of viscid liquid before Simon who, under cover of this movement, dropped his hand on her thigh. The girl smacked him sharply on the back of his gray head with her flat palm.
    “Miss Rachel, cant you make him keep his hands to hisself?” she said.
    “Aint you ’shamed,” Rachel demanded, but without rancor. “A ole gray-head man like you, wid a fam’ly of grown chillen and one foot in de graveyard?”
    “Hush yo’ mouf, woman,” Simon said placidly, spooning spinach into his melted ice-cream. “Aint dey erbout breakin’ up in yonder yit?”
    “I reckon dey’s erbout to,” the other guest answered, putting another laden biscuit into her mouth with a gesture of elegant gentility. “Seems like dey’s talkin’ louder.”
    “Den dey’s started playin’ again,” Simon corrected. “Talkin’ jes’ eased off whiles dey et. Yes, suh, dey’s started playin’ again. Dat’s white folks. Nigger aint got sense ernough ter play cards wid all dat racket gwine on.”
    But they were breaking up. Miss Jenny Du Pre had just finished a story which left the three players at her table avoiding one another’s eyes a little self-consciously, as was her way. Miss Jenny travelled very little, and in Pullman smoke-rooms not at all, and people wondered where she got her stories; who had told them to her. And she repeated them anywhere and at any time, choosing the wrong moment and the wrong audience with a cold and cheerful audacity. Young people liked her,