Page:Zora Neale Hurston - The Mule-Bone.pdf/30

 OLD WOMAN: You-all ought to be shame, carrying on over a brazen heifer like Daisy Taylor. Jus' cause she's been up North and come back, I reckon you cutting de fool sho 'nough now. She ain't studying none of you-all nohow. All she wants is what you got in your pocket.

JIME: I likes her but she won't git nothin' outa me. She never did. I wouldn't give a poor consumpted cripple a crutch to cross the River Jurdon.

DAVE: I know I ain't gonna give no woman nothin'. I wouldn't give a dog a doughnut if he treed a terrapin.

LIGE: Youse a cottontail dispute....both of you. You'd give her anything you got. You'd give her Georgia with a fence 'round it.

OLD MAN: Yeah, and she'd take it, too.

LINDSAY: Don't distriminate the woman like that. That ain't nothing but hogism. Ain't nothin' the matter with Daisy, she's all right.

(Enter TEETS and BOOTSIE tittering coyly and switching themselves.)

BOOTSIE: Is seen my mama?

OLD WOMAN: You know you ain't lookin' for no mama. Jus' come back down here to show your shape and fan around awhile. (BOOTSIE and TEETS going into store.)

BOOTSIE & TEETS: No, we ain't. We'se come to get our mail.

OLD WOMAN: (After girls enter store) Why don't you all keep up some attention to these nice girls here, Bootsie and Teets. They wants to marry.

DAVE: Aw, who thinkin' 'bout marryin' now? They better stay home and eat their own pa's rations. I gotta buy myself some shoes.

JIM: The woman I'm gonna marry ain't born yet and her maw is dead. (GIRLS come out giggling and exit.) (JIM begins to strum his guitar lightly at first as the talk goes on.)