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At this moment Abner heard the sound for which he had been waiting, so began moving toward the door.

"I think Shallburger wants us to petition the Guv'ment to pension us."

"Hold on, wait—what will he say he wants it for?"

"So he won't haff to work—now I got to go."

"Fuh God's sake, hold on. What makes you so fidgety? You belong to 'em, don't you? How come you to join any such fool society?"

Abner opened the door and remarked briefly, "I was drunk," and stepped into the hallway, closing the door behind him.

His exit was accurately timed. Miss Nessie Sutton was just passing the door. He said "Good-mornin'" to the girl, and she said "Good-mornin'." Without further conversation Abner followed her down to breakfast.

The dining room of the Scovell House was dark and smelly as if air and sunlight were luxuries hardly to be arrived at in the country. The table linen was dirty and torn; the silver plating was worn off the spoons; the coffee cost thirty cents a pound. Yet Abner could never enter the dining room of the Scovell House without a certain embarrassment at the magnificence of its service. The Negro table boy in his dirty white coat always intimidated and irritated Abner with his hillman hostility to all Negroes. When the table boy asked Abner would he have his eggs boiled or fried, the white youth felt an inward tremor lest he should say or do the wrong thing.

A still greater hazard of a faux pas lay in the fact that Abner ate directly across the table from Nessie, so he was continually under her pansy and, the youth felt sure, critical eyes. Nessie herself unfolded her napkin and ordered her egg casually. She was in no trepidation whatever of the table boy.

Breakfast at the Scovell House began with about a three-fifths-cooked oatmeal, then bacon and eggs and coffee. Abner preferred milk but he felt coffee to be a more manly