w-went for a little ride. F-f-f-frankly, I fink it would do us good,” he said, looking at Eugene with a very earnest look in his restless and tormented eyes. “I fink we need it! F-f-f-frankly, I fink we do,” he said, and then added abruptly and eagerly as he thrust his clumsy fingers through his hair: “W-w-w-wy, what do you say?”
“Why, yes!” his mother responded with an instant alacrity as she got up from her chair. “That’s the very thing! A little breath of fresh air is just the thing we need—as the feller says,” she said, turning to Eugene now and beginning to laugh slyly, and with pleasure, passing one finger shyly underneath her broad red nose-wing as she spoke—, “as the feller says, it costs nothin’and it’s Nature’s sovereign remedy, good for man and good for beast!—So let’s all get out into the light of open day again,” she said with rhetorical deliberation, “and breathe in God’s fresh air like He intended we should do—for there’s one thing sure,” his mother went on in tones of solemn warning, which seemed directed to a vast unseen audience of the universe rather than to themselves, “there’s one thing sure—you can’t violate the laws of God or nature,” she said decisively, “or you’ll pay for it—as sure as you’re born. As sure as you’re born,” she whispered. “Why, yes, now!”—she went on, with a start of recollective memory—“Here now!—Say!—Didn’t I see it—wasn’t I readin’?—Why, here, you know, the other day,” she went on impatiently, as if the subject of these obscure broken references must instantly be clear to everyone—“why, it was in the paper, you know—this article written by Doctor Royal S. Copeland,” his mother said, nodding her head with deliberate satisfaction over his name, and pronouncing the full title sonorously with the obvious satisfaction that titles and distinctions always gave her—“that’s who it was all right, sayin’that fresh air was the thing that everyone must have, and that all of us should take good care to—”
“Now, M-m-m-m-mama,” said Luke, who had paid no attention at all to what she had been saying, but had stood there during all the time she was speaking, breathing his large, weary, and unhappy breath, thrusting his clumsy fingers through his hair, as his harassed and tormented eyes flickered restlessly about the room in a driven but unseeing stare:—“Now, M-m-m-mama!” he said in a tone of exasperated and frenzied impatience, “if we’re g-g-g-going we’ve g-g-g-got to get started! N-n-n-now I d-d-don’t mean next W-w-w-w-Wednesday,” he snarled, with exasperated sarcasm, “I d-d-d-don’t m-m-m-mean the fifteenth of next July. But—now—now—now,” he muttered crazily, coming to her with his large
