Then I'm through; they can kiss my foot for every other red cent of mine they get.
I went back to the store.
It was half past three almost.
Dam little time to do anything in, but then I am used to that. I never had to go to Harvard to learn that.
The band had quit playing.
Got them all inside now, and they wouldn't have to waste any more wind.
Earl says,
"He found you, did he?
He was in here with it a while ago.
I thought you were out back somewhere."
"Yes," I says. "I got it.
They couldn't keep it away from me all afternoon. The town's too small. I've got to go out home a minute," I says. "You can dock me if it'll make you feel any better."
"Go ahead," he says. "I can handle it now.
No bad news, I hope."
"You'll have to go to the telegraph office and find that out," I says. "They'll have time to tell you.
I haven't."
"I just asked," he says. "Your mother knows she can depend on me."
"She'll appreciate it," I says. "I wont be gone any longer than I have to."
"Take your time," he says. "I can handle it now.
You go ahead."
I got the car and went home.
Once this morning, twice at noon, and now again, with her and having to chase all over town and having to beg them to let me eat a little of the food I am paying for.
Sometimes I think what's the use of anything.
With the precedent I've been set I must be crazy to keep on.
And now I reckon I'll get home just in time to take a nice long drive after a basket of tomatoes or something and then have to go back to town smelling like a camphor factory so my head wont explode right on my shoulders.
I keep telling her there's not a dam thing in that aspirin except flour and water for imaginary invalids.
I says you dont know what a headache is.
I says you think I'd fool with that dam car at all if it depended on me.
I says I can get along without one I've learned to get along without lots of things but if you want to risk yourself in that old wornout surrey with a halfgrown nigger boy all right because I says God looks after Ben's kind, God knows He ought to do something for him but if you think I'm going to trust a thousand dollars' worth of delicate machinery to a halfgrown nigger or a grown one either, you'd better buy him one yourself because I says you like to ride in the car and you know you do.
Dilsey said she was in the house.
I went on into the hall and listened, but I didn't hear anything.
I went up stairs, but just as I passed her door she called me.
"I just wanted to know who it was," she says. "I'm here alone so much that I hear every sound."
"You dont have to stay here," I says. "You could spend the whole day visiting like other women, if you wanted to."
She came to the door.
"I thought maybe you were sick," she says. "Having to hurry through your dinner like you did."
"Better luck next time," I says. "What do you want?"
"Is anything wrong?" she says.
"What could be?" I says. "Cant I come home in the middle of the afternoon without upsetting the whole house?"
"Have you seen Quentin?" she says.
"She's in school," I says.
"It's after three," she says. "I heard the clock strike at least a half an hour ago.
She ought to be home by now."
"Ought she?" I says. "When have you ever seen her before dark?"
"She ought to be home," she says. "When I was a girl--"
"You had somebody to make you behave yourself," I says. "She hasn't."
"I cant do anything with her," she says. "I've tried and I've tried."
"And you wont let me, for some reason," I says. "So you ought to be satisfied." I went on to my room.
I turned the key easy and stood there until the knob turned.
Then she says, "Jason."