Page:Short Grass (1926).pdf/101

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ing up to discover the evidences of opulence around him.

Mrs. Brassfield had everything ready, which is to say the bacon and canned hominy, and sorgum to be dipped out of a yellow bowl with a spoon, with a crock of batter on the back of the stove and a smoking griddle waiting to fry the corn cakes. She placed Dunham at the table, which was big enough to seat twelve or fourteen men, with great solicitation for his comfort, as she might have treated a boy one-third his years, and turned her attention to the griddle, greasing it with a distressing dark rag which she dipped in a can.

They held out their plates to receive the first batch of cakes, which Mrs. Brassfield did not stir from the stove to deliver, flipping them deftly from her caketurner, never missing a word or a shot. It was a very interesting procedure to Dunham, lending a certain gambling element to the meal as well as establishing a feeling of fellowship between them that could not have been reached by more conventional means of deilvering corn cakes to a plate.

Mrs. Brassfield inquired into Dunham's sources of origin and his reasons for coming to that country, exclaiming in depreciation of his misguided ambition when he explained that he had been moved by a desire to throw his feet.

"Lord love you, Mr. Dunham," she said, feelingly and affectionately, her sharp brown face not a tint livelier for all the close operation above her griddle, "I've been throwin' my feet for nineteen years I've