Get you a lunch at Rogers' and put a ticket in the drawer."
"Much obliged," I says. "I can still manage to feed myself, I reckon."
And right there he'd stay, watching that door like a hawk until I came through it again.
Well, he'd just have to watch it for a while; I was doing the best I could.
The time before I says that's the last one now; you'll have to remember to get some more right away.
But who can remember anything in all this hurrah.
And now this dam show had to come here the one day I'd have to hunt all over town for a blank check, besides all the other things I had to do to keep the house running, and Earl watching the door like a hawk.
I went to the printing shop and told him I wanted to play a joke on a fellow, but he didn't have anything.
Then he told me to have a look in the old opera house, where somebody had stored a lot of papers and junk out of the old Merchants' and Farmers' Bank when it failed, so I dodged up a few more alleys so Earl couldn't see me and finally found old man Simmons and got the key from him and went up there and dug around.
At last I found a pad on a Saint Louis bank.
And of course she'd pick this one time to look at it close.
Well, it would have to do.
I couldn't waste any more time now.
I went back to the store.
"Forgot some papers Mother wants to go to the bank," I says.
I went back to the desk and fixed the check.
Trying to hurry and all, I says to myself it's a good thing her eyes are giving out, with that little whore in the house, a Christian forbearing woman like Mother.
I says you know just as well as I do what she's going to grow up into but I says that's your business, if you want to keep her and raise her in your house just because of Father.
Then she would begin to cry and say it was her own flesh and blood so I just says All right.
Have it your way.
I can stand it if you can.
I fixed the letter up again and glued it back and went out.
"Try not to be gone any longer than you can help," Earl says.
"All right," I says.
I went to the telegraph office.
The smart boys were all there.
"Any of you boys made your million yet?" I says.
"Who can do anything, with a market like that?" Doc says.
"What's it doing?" I says. I went in and looked.
It was three points under the opening. "You boys are not going to let a little thing like the cotton market beat you, are you?" I says.
"I thought you were too smart for that."
"Smart, hell," Doc says. "It was down twelve points at twelve oclock.
Cleaned me out."
"Twelve points?" I says. "Why the hell didn't somebody let me know?
Why didn't you let me know?" I says to the operator.
"I take it as it comes in," he says. "I'm not running a bucket shop."
"You're smart, aren't you?" I says. "Seems to me, with the money I spend with you, you could take time to call me up.
Or maybe your dam company's in a conspiracy with those dam eastern sharks."
He didn't say anything.
He made like he was busy.
"You're getting a little too big for your pants," I says. "First thing you know you'll be working for a living."
"What's the matter with you?" Doc says. "You're still three points to the good."
"Yes," I says. "If I happened to be selling.
I haven't mentioned that yet, I think.
You boys all cleaned out?"
"I got caught twice," Doc says. "I switched just in time."
"Well," I. O. Snopes says. "I've picked hit; I reckon taint no more than fair fer hit to pick me once in a while."
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.