I never saw no ring.
But Like as not, they aint heard yet out there that they use rings.
"I got the money," she says.
She showed it to me, tied up in her handkerchief: a ten spot.
"I'll swear you have," I says.
"He give it to you?"
"Yes," she says.
"Which one?" I says.
She looks at me.
"Which one of them give it to you?"
"It aint but one," she says.
She looks at me.
"Go on," I says.
She dont say nothing.
The trouble about the cellar is, it aint but one way out and that's back up the inside stairs.
The clock says twenty-five to one.
"A pretty girl like you," I says.
She looks at me.
She begins to tie the money back up in the handkerchief.
"Excuse me a minute," I says.
I go around the prescription case.
"Did you hear about that fellow sprained his ear?" I says.
"After that he couldn't even hear a belch."
"You better get her out from back there before the old man comes," Jody says.
"If you'll stay up there in front where he pays you to stay, he wont catch nobody but me," I says.
He goes on, slow, toward the front
"What you doing to her, Skeet?" he says.
"I cant tell you," I says.
'It wouldn't be ethical.
You go on up there and watch."
"Say, Skeet," he says.
"Ah, go on," I says. “I aint doing nothing but filling a prescription."
"He may not do nothing about that woman back there, but if he finds you monkeying with that prescription case, he'll kick your stern clean down them cellar stairs." "My stern has been kicked by bigger bastards than him," I says. "Go back and watch out for him, now."
So I come back.
The clock said fifteen to one.
She is tying the money in the handkerchief.
"You aint the doctor," she says.
"Sure I am," I says.
She watches me.
"Is it because I look too young, or am I too handsome?" I says.
"We used to have a bunch of old water-jointed doctors here," I says;
"Jefferson used to be a kind of Old Doctors' Home for them.
But business started falling off and folks stayed so well until one day they found out that the women wouldn't never get sick at all.
So they run all the old doctors out and got us young good-looking ones that the women would like and then the women begun to get sick again and so business picked up.
They're doing that all over the country.
Hadn't you heard about it?
Maybe it's because you aint never needed a doctor."
"I need one now," she says.
"And you come to the right one," I says.
"I already told you that."