“They didn’t do nothing. And they didn’t act anyway much, as fur as I see. They tiptoed away; so I seen, easy enough, that they’d shoved in there to do up your majesty’s room, or something, s’posing you was up; and found you warn’t up, and so they was hoping to slide out of the way of trouble without waking you up, if they hadn’t already waked you up.”
“Great guns, this is a go!” says the king; and both of them looked pretty sick and tolerable silly. They stood there a-thinking and scratching their heads a minute, and the duke he bust into a kind of a little raspy chuckle, and says:
“It does beat all how neat the niggers played their hand. They let on to be sorry they was going out of this region! And I believed they was sorry, and so did you, and so did everybody. Don’t ever tell me any more that a nigger ain’t got any histrionic talent. Why, the way they played that thing it would fool anybody . In my opinion, there’s a fortune in ’em. If I had capital and a theater, I wouldn’t want a better layout than that—and here we’ve gone and sold ’em for a song. Yes, and ain’t privileged to sing the song yet. Say, where is that song—that draft?”
“In the bank for to be collected. Where would it be?”
“Well, that’s all right then, thank goodness.”
Says I, kind of timid-like:
“Is something gone wrong?”
The king whirls on me and rips out:
“None o’ your business! You keep your head shet, and mind y’r own affairs—if you got any. Long as you’re in this town don’t you forgit that —you hear?” Then he says to the duke, “We got to jest swaller it and say noth’n’: mum’s the word for us .”