While Skeeter Butts sat beside her and trembled, wondering what to say, and very much wishing himself somewhere else, Dinner Gaze and Tucky Sugg came around to the side of the house where they were sitting. “You want me to cornfess yo’ sins fer you, Dinner Gaze?” Ginny Babe howled, turning her green eyes upon him. “You don’t know nothin’.” Dinner asserted, gazing at her with his beady eyes without a trace of fear, his black, dough-like face as expressionless as when Hitch Diamond had first seen it. “Whoof!” the old woman exploded the third time. Shifting her mountainous fat to her feet and standing up, she glared at Dinner Gaze in a perfect fury; then, to Skeeter’s surprise, her voice changed completely from its bellowing tone to an intonation as soft as Dinner’s own. She muttered aloud, looking at Dinner with intent gaze as if she were seeing him for the first time: “Naw, suh, I don’t know nothin’ agin you!” “I gambles fer a livin’,” Dinner grinned. “Dat ain’t no highbrow job. I follers de races an’ hangs aroun’ prize-fighters, an’ drinks a little booze an’ plays a little craps an’ coon-can, but I ain’t got nothin’ to hide from nobody.” “Dar now!” Ginny whooped in a triumphant voice. “Didn’t I jes’ tole you dat I had a hoodoo face? Nobody kin look at me an’ hide deir sins!” “I ain’t allowin’ nobody to low-rate me, neither,” Tucky Sugg proclaimed. “You wanter cornfess my sins, Sister Ginny?” Ginny broke out into a loud, whooping laugh. “You ain’t got no sins, Tucky,” she guffawed. “You ain’t nothin’ but a idjut--an’ no limb didn’t fall on you, neither. You was nachel-bawned dat way. Idjuts ain’t responsible!” Chuckling to herself, she picked up her fast-reviving hen, carried it back to a large hen-house on the other side of her home, and threw it inside the door. Closing the door she waddled back, and waved a fat hand at the three men. “Don’t fergit dat Ginny’s got a hoodoo face, niggers!” she bawled. “Huh!” Dinner Gaze grunted. “Listen to dat ole fat fool!” “Come on, niggers,” Tucky Sugg said in a disgusted tone. “Less git away from dis place.” As the three men walked down the street, Skeeter said: “Dinner, is you ever had any expe’unce ’tendin’ bar?” “Yes, suh.” “Would you wish to he’p Pap Curtain take keer of my saloom fer de nex’ ten days?” he asked next. “It’ll suit me fine,” Dinner told him. They discussed the business for a little while, then Skeeter left them at the next corner. “I leaves it wid you an’ Pap, Dinner,” Skeeter said. “I needs a leetle rest an’ I’s gwine to trabbel some.” XIV SKEETER STARTS A BLAZE. For the next four days Pap Curtain and Dinner Gaze tended bar in the Hen-Scratch saloon for Skeeter Butts.