So I left them buying and selling among themselves at a nickel a point. I found a nigger and sent him for my car and stood on the corner and waited. I couldn’t see Earl looking up and down the street, with one eye on the clock, because I couldn’t see the door from here. After about a week he got back with it.

“Where the hell have you been?” I says, “Riding around where the wenches could see you?”

“I come straight as I could,” he says, “I had to drive clean around the square, wid all dem wagons.”

I never found a nigger yet that didn’t have an airtight alibi for whatever he did. But just turn one loose in a car and he’s bound to show off. I got in and went on around the square. I caught a glimpse of Earl in the door across the square.

I went straight to the kitchen and told Dilsey to hurry up with dinner.

“Quentin aint come yit,” she says.