She shut the door.
Luster went to the woodpile.
The five jaybirds whirled over the house, screaming, and into the mulberries again.
He watched them.
He picked up a rock and threw it.
"Whoo," he said.
"Git on back to hell, whar you belong at.
'Taint Monday yit."
He loaded himself mountainously with stove wood. He could not see over it, and he staggered to the steps and up them and blundered crashing against the door, shedding billets.
Then Dilsey came and opened the door for him and he blundered across the kitchen.
"You, Luster!"Hah!"" she shouted, but he had already hurled the wood into the box with a thunderous crash.
"Hah!" he said.
"Is you tryin to wake up de whole house?" Dilsey said. She hit him on the back of his head with the flat of her hand. "Go on up dar and git Benjy dressed, now."
"Yessum," he said.
He went toward the outer door.
"Whar you gwine Dilsey said.
"I thought I better go round de house en in by de front, so I wont wake up Miss Cahline en dem."
"You go on up dem back stairs like I tole you en git Benjy's clothes on him," Dilsey said. "Go on, now."
"Yessum," Luster said. He returned and left by the diningroom door.
After a while it ceased to flap.
Dilsey prepared to make biscuit.
As she ground the sifter steadily above the bread board, she sang, to herself at first, something without particular tune or words, repetitive, mournful and plaintive, austere, as she ground a faint, steady snowing of flour onto the bread board.
The stove had begun to heat the room and to fill it with murmurous minors of the fire, and presently she was singing louder, as if her voice too had been thawed out by the growing warmth, and then Mrs Compson called her name again from within the house.
Dilsey raised her face as if her eyes could and did penetrate the walls and ceiling and saw the old woman in her quilted dressing gown at the head of the stairs, calling her name with machinelike regularity.
"Oh, Lawd," Dilsey said.
She set the sifter down and swept up the hem of her apron and wiped her hands and caught up the bottle from the chair on which she had laid it and gathered her apron about the handle of the kettle which was now jetting faintly. "Jes a minute," she called. "De water jes dis minute got hot."
It was not the bottle which Mrs Compson wanted, however, and clutching it by the neck like a dead hen Dilsey went to the foot of the stairs and looked upward.
"Aint Luster up dar wid him?" she said.
"Luster hasn't been in the house.
I've been lying here listening for him.
I knew he would be late, but I did hope he'd come in time to keep Benjamin from disturbing Jason on Jason's one day in the week to sleep in the morning."
"I dont see how you expect anybody to sleep, wid you standin in de hall, holl'in at folks fum de crack of dawn," Dilsey said.
She began to mount the stairs, toiling heavily. "I sent dat boy up dar half an hour ago."
Mrs Compson watched her, holding the dressing gown under her chin.
"What are you going to do?" she said.
"Gwine git Benjy dressed en bring him down to de kitchen, whar he wont wake Jason en Quentin," Dilsey said.
"Haven't you started breakfast yet?"
"I'll tend to dat too," Dilsey said. "You better git back in bed swell Luster make yo fire.
Hit cold dis mawnin."
"I know it," Mrs Compson said.
"My feet are like ice. They were so cold they waked me up." She watched Dilsey mount the stairs. It took her a long while. "You know how it frets Jason when breakfast is late," Mrs Compson said.
"I cant do but one thing at a time," Dilsey said. "You git on back to bed, fo I has you on my hands dis mawnin too."
"If you're going to drop everything to dress Benjamin, I'd better come down and get breakfast.
You know as well as I do how Jason acts when it's late." "En who gwine eat yo messin?" Dilsey said. "Tell me dat. Go on now," she said, toiling upward.
Mrs Compson stood watching her as she mounted, steadying herself against the wall with one hand, holding her skirts up with the other.
"Are you going to wake him up just to dress him?" she said.
Dilsey stopped.
With her foot lifted to the next step she stood there, her hand against the wall and the gray splash of the window behind her, motionless and shapeless she loomed.
"He aint awake den?" she said.
"He wasn't when I looked in," Mrs Compson said. "But it's past his time.