Page:The New Negro.pdf/86

60 “Thank y', suh," said Gillis, and put the card in his pocket.

The little yellow man watched him plod flat-footedly on down the street, long awkward legs never quite straightened, shouldered extension-case bending him sidewise, wonder upon wonder halting or turning him about. Presently, as he proceeded, a pair of bright-green stockings caught and held his attention. Tony, the storekeeper, was crossing the sidewalk with a bushel basket of apples. There was a collision; the apples rolled; Tony exploded; King Solomon apologized. The little yellow man laughed shortly, took out a notebook, and put down the address he had seen on King Solomon's slip of paper.

“Guess you're the shine I been waitin' for," he surmised.

As Gillis, approaching his destination, stopped to rest, a haunting notion grew into an insistent idea. “Dat li'l yaller nigger was a sho' 'nuff gen’man to show me de road. Seem lak I knowed him befo?'—” He pondered. That receding brow, that sharp-ridged, spreading nose, that tight upper lip over the two big front teeth, that chinless jaw- He fumbled hurriedly for the card he had not looked at and eagerly made out the name.

“Mouse Uggam, sho' 'nuff! Well, dog-gone!”

Uggam sought out Tom Edwards, once a Pullman porter, now prosperous proprietor of a cabaret, and told him:

“Chief, I got him: a baby jess in from the land o' cotton and so dumb he thinks ante-bellum's an old woman.

“Wher'd you find him?”

“Where you find all the jay birds when they first hit Harlem—at the subway entrance. This one come up the stairs, batted his eyes once or twice, an' froze to the spot—with his mouth open. Sure sign he's from 'way down behind the sun an' ripe f' the pluckin”.”

Edwards grinned a gold-studded, fat-jowled grin. “Gave him the usual line, I suppose?”

“Didn't miss. An' he fell like a ton o' bricks. Course