Page:Porgy.djvu/76

 toward the entrance, gave a sudden twist to the tail, and drove audaciously across the pavement, and into the retreat. Then he hitched his wagon a few feet from the street, and seated himself, cup in hand, at the pavement's inner edge

"Yuh bes' git along out of Mr. Alan' do way wid dat goat befo' he fin' yuh. Ain't yuh onduhstan' gentlemen ain't likes tuh smell goat?"

Porgy looked up and met the threatening gaze of Simon Frasier.

Frasier was a practising attorney-at-law. He was well past fifty years of age, and his greying wool looked very white in comparison with his uncompromisingly black skin. He had voted the democratic ticket in the dark period of reconstrutionreconstruction [sic], when such action on his part took no little courage, and accordingly enjoyed the almost unlimited toleration of the aristocracy. Without possessing the official sanction of the State for the practice of his profession, he was, by common consent among the lawyers, permitted to represent his own people in the police and magistrates' courts and to turn his hand to other small legal matters into which it was thought inadvisable to enquire too deeply.

Porgy regarded his accuser stonily.