"Kin we go to de pastuh?" Luster said.
"All right.
Only you keep him away fum de house.
I done stood all I kin."
"Yessum," Luster said. "Whar Mr Jason gone, mammy?"
"Dat's some mo of yo business, aint it?" Dilsey said.
She began to clear the table. "Hush, Benjy.
Luster gwine take you out to play."
"Whut he done to Miss Quentin, mammy?" Luster said.
"Aint done nothin to her.
You all git on outen here."
"I bet she aint here," Luster said.
Dilsey looked at him.
"How you know she aint here?"
"Me and Benjy seed her clamb out de window last night.
Didn't us, Benjy?"
"You did?" Dilsey said, looking at him.
"We sees her doin hit ev'y night," Luster said. "Clamb right down dat pear tree."
"Dont you lie to me, nigger boy," Dilsey said.
"I aint lyin.
Ask Benjy ef I is."
"Whyn't you say somethin about it, den?"
"'Twarn't none o my business," Luster said. "I aint gwine git mixed up in white folks' business.
Come on here, Benjy, les go out do's."
They went out.
Dilsey stood for a while at the table, then she went and cleared the breakfast things from the diningroom and ate her breakfast and cleaned up the kitchen.
Then she removed her apron and hung it up and went to the foot of the stairs and listened for a moment. There was no sound.
She donned the overcoat and the hat and went across to her cabin.
The rain had stopped.
The air now drove out of the southeast, broken overhead into blue patches.
Upon the crest of a hill beyond the trees and roofs and spires of town sunlight lay like a pale scrap of cloth, was blotted away.
Upon the air a bell came, then as if at a signal, other bells took up the sound and repeated it.
The cabin door opened and Dilsey emerged, again in the maroon cape and the purple gown, and wearing soiled white elbow-length gloves and minus her headcloth now.
She came into the yard and called Luster.
She waited a while, then she went to the house and around it to the cellar door, moving close to the wall, and looked into the door. Ben sat on the steps.
Before him Luster squatted on the damp floor.
He held a saw in his left hand, the blade sprung a little by pressure of his hand, and he was in the act of striking the blade with the worn wooden mallet with which she had been making beaten biscuit for more than thirty years.
The saw gave forth a single sluggish twang that ceased with lifeless alacrity, leaving the blade in a thin clean curve between Luster's hand and the floor.
Still, inscrutable, it bellied.
"Dat's de way he done hit," Luster said. "I jes aint foun de right thing to hit it wid."
"Dat's whut you doin, is it?" Dilsey said. "Bring me dat mallet," she said.
"I aint hurt hit," Luster said.
"Bring hit here," Dilsey said. "Put dat saw whar you got hit first."
He put the saw away and brought the mallet to her.
Then Ben wailed again, hopeless and prolonged.
It was nothing. Just sound.
It might have been all time and injustice and sorrow become vocal for an instant by a conjunction of planets.
"Listen at him," Luster said. "He been gwine on dat way ev'y since you vent us outen de house.
I dont know whut got in to him dis mawnin."
"Bring him here," Dilsey said.