"You get a receipt," Shreve said. "You get a signed receipt for that money."
The squire looked at Shreve mildly.
"Case dismissed," he said without raising his voice.
"I'll be damned--" Shreve said.
"Come on here," Spoade said, taking his arm. "Good afternoon, Judge.
Much obliged." As we passed out the door Julio's voice rose again, violent, then ceased.
Spoade was looking at me, his brown eyes quizzical, a little cold. "Well, bud, I reckon you'll do your girl chasing in Boston after this."
"You damned fool," Shreve said. "What the hell do you mean anyway, straggling off here, fooling with these damn wops?"
"Come on," Spoade said. "They must be getting impatient."
Mrs Bland was talking to them.
They were Miss Holmes and Miss Daingerfield and they quit listening to her and looked at me again with that delicate and curious horror, their veils turned back upon their little white noses and their eyes fleeing and mysterious beneath the veils.
"Quentin Compson," Mrs Bland said. "What would your mother say.
A young man naturally gets into scrapes, but to be arrested on foot by a country policeman.
What did they think he'd done, Gerald?"
"Nothing," Gerald said.
"Nonsense.
What was it, you, Spoade?"
"He was trying to kidnap that little dirty girl, but they caught him in time," Spoade said.
"Nonsense," Mrs Bland said, but her voice sort of died away and she stared at me for a moment, and the girls drew their breaths in with a soft concerted sound. "Fiddlesticks," Mrs Bland said briskly. "If that isn't just like these ignorant lowclass Yankees.
Get in, Quentin."
Shreve and I sat on two small collapsible seats.
Gerald cranked the car and got in and we started.
"Now, Quentin, you tell me what all this foolishness is about," Mrs Bland said.
I told them, Shreve hunched and furious on his little seat and Spoade sitting again on the back of his neck beside Miss Daingerfield.
"And the joke is, all the time Quentin had us all fooled," Spoade said. "All the time we thought he was the model youth that anybody could trust a daughter with, until the police showed him up at his nefarious work."
"Hush up, Spoade," Mrs Bland said.
We drove down the street and crossed the bridge and passed the house where the pink garment hung in the window. "That's what you get for not reading my note.
Why didn't you come and get it?
Mr MacKenzie says he told you it was there."
"Yessum.
I intended to, but I never went back to the room."
"You'd have let us sit there waiting I dont know how long, if it hadn't been for Mr MacKenzie.
When he said you hadn't come back, that left an extra place, so we asked him to come.
We're very glad to have you anyway, Mr MacKenzie." Shreve said nothing.
His arms were folded and he glared straight ahead past Gerald's cap. It was a cap for motoring in England.
Mrs Bland said so.
We passed that house, and three others, and another yard where the little girl stood by the gate.
She didn't have the bread now, and her face looked like it had been streaked with coaldust.
I waved my hand, but she made no reply, only her head turned slowly as the car passed, following us with her unwinking gaze.
Then we ran beside the wall, our shadows running along the wall, and after a while we passed a piece of torn newspaper lying beside the road and I began to laugh again.
I could feel it in my throat and I looked off into the trees where the afternoon slanted, thinking of afternoon and of the bird and the boys in swimming.
But still I couldn't stop it and then I knew that if I tried too hard to stop it I'd be crying and I thought about how I'd thought about I could not be a virgin, with so many of them walking along in the shadows and whispering with their soft girlvoices lingering in the shadowy places and the words coming out and perfume and eyes you could feel not see, but if it was that simple to do it wouldn't be anything and if it wasn't anything, what was I and then Mrs Bland said,
"Quentin?
Is he sick, Mr MacKenzie?" and then Shreve's fat hand touched my knee and Spoade began talking and I quit trying to stop it.
"If that hamper is in his way, Mr MacKenzie, move it over on your side.
I brought a hamper of wine because I think young gentlemen should drink wine, although my father, Gerald's grandfather " ever do that Have you ever done that In the gray darkness a little light her hands locked about
"They do, when they can get it," Spoade said. "Hey, Shreve?" her knees her face looking at the sky the smell of honeysuckle upon her face and throat
"Beer, too," Shreve said.
His hand touched my knee again.
I moved my knee again. like a thin wash of lilac colored paint talking about him bringing