Six Bits a Sop

Mostly Cajun, in comments reminds me of a old-time saying, sopping.  This was an activity where you'd take a piece of bread, or biscuit, or cornbread, and put it into a liquid, normally gravy or syrup, to get all the goodness off the plate before it was taken to the kitchen for washing.  The Cajun reminds me,

we'd do a good amount of syrup, mash in some butter, and dip cold left-over biscuits in it for an afternoon snack.

That was sopping.  Using bread to get food to your mouth.  You could sop anything, the leftover egg yellow, spaghetti sauce, anything that would absorb or stick to bread.

Back in those days, a dollar was mentally divided into many different denominations.  One of  those was a bit, which was an eighth of a dollar.  A quarter was two bits.  Sitting around the country store, you might be talking about a rich man, and someone would say "He don't care if syrup goes to six bits a sop."  That was a rich man who'd pay seventy-five cents to sop a biscuit.  Back in those days a quart of syrup probably didn't cost more than a dollar.  Any fellow that could pay six bits for a sop didn't worry about the cost of syrup.