“We got plenty of time,” I said. “I wonder what them machines costs on the instalment.”
“Instalment of what?” Jewel said. “What you got to buy it with?”
“A fellow can’t tell,” I said. “I could ’a’ bought that one from Suratt for five dollars, I believe.”
And so pa come back and we went to Peabody’s. While we was there pa said he was going to the barbershop and get a shave. And so that night he said he had some business to tend to, kind of looking away from us while he said it, with his hair combed wet and slick and smelling sweet with perfume, but I said leave him be; I wouldn’t mind hearing a little more of that music myself.
And so next morning he was gone again, then he come back and told us get hitched up and ready to take out and he would meet us and when they was gone he said,
“I don’t reckon you got no more money.”
“Peabody just give me enough to pay the hotel with,” I said. “We don’t need nothing else, do we?”
“No,” pa said; “no. We don’t need nothing.” He stood there, not looking at me.
“If it is something we got to have, I reckon maybe Peabody,” I said.
“No,” he said; “it ain’t nothing else. You all wait for me at the corner.”
So Jewel got the team and come for me and they fixed me a pallet in the wagon and we drove across the square to the corner where pa said, and we was waiting there in the wagon, with Dewey Dell and Vardaman eating bananas, when we see them coming up the street. Pa was coming