hands lifted like claws, the fingers working, and with a look of fiendish madness in his eyes.
“Now!” he whispered hoarsely. “This week! Today! This afternoon! A-a-a-a-at once!” he barked suddenly, jumping at her comically; then thrusting his hand through his hair again, he said in a weary and exasperated voice:
“M-m-m-mama, will you please get ready? I b-b-b-beg of you. I beseech you—please!” he said, in tortured entreaty.
“All right! All right!” his mother replied instantly in a tone of the heartiest and most conciliatory agreement. “I’ll be ready in five minutes! I’ll just go back here and put on a coat over this old dress—so folks won’t see me,” she laughed shyly, “an’I’ll be ready before you know it!—Pshaw, boy!” she now said in a rather nettled tone, as if the afterthought of his impatience had angered her a little, “now you don’t need to worry about my being ready,” she said, “because when the time comes—I’ll be there!” she said, with the loose, deliberate, man-like gesture of her right hand and in tones of telling deliberation. “Now you worry about yourself!” she said. “For I’ll be ready before you are—yes, and I’m never late for an appointment, either,” she said strongly, “and that’s more than you can say—for I’ve seen you miss’em time an’time again.”
During all this time Luke had been thrusting his fingers through his hair, breathing heavily and unhappily, and pawing and muttering over a mass of thumbed envelopes and papers which were covered with the undecipherable scrawls and jottings of his nervous hand: “T-t-t-Tuesday,” he muttered, “Tuesday… Tuesday in Blackstone—B-b-b-b-Blackstone—Blackstone—Blackstone, South Car’lina,” he muttered in a confused and distracted manner, as if these names were completely meaningless to him, and he had never heard them before. “Now—ah!” he suddenly sang out in a rich tenor voice, as he lifted his hand, thrust his fingers through his hair, and stared wildly ahead of him—“meet Livermore in Blackstone Tuesday morning—see p-p-p-p-prospect in G-g-g-g-Gadsby Tuesday afternoon about—about—about—Wheet!”—here he whistled sharply, as he always did when he hung upon a word—“about a new set of batteries for his Model X—Style 37—lighting system—which the cheap p-p-p-penny-pinching South Car’lina bastard w-w-w-wants for nothing—Wednesday m-m-m-morning b-b-b-back to Blackstone—F’ursday… w-w-w-wy,” he muttered pawing clumsily and confusedly at his envelopes with a demented glare—"F-f-f-f-f’ursday—you—ah—j-j-j-jump over to C-c-c-Cavendish to t-t-t-try to persuade that ignorant
