red-faced nigger-Baptist son of a bitch that it’s f-f-f-for his own b-b-b-best interests to scrap the-the-w-w-w-wy the d-d-d-decrepit pile of junk he’s been using since S-s-s-Sherman marched through Georgia and b-b-b-buy the new X50 model T Style 46 transmission—
“M-m-m-mama!” he cried suddenly, turning toward her with a movement of frenzied and exasperated entreaty. “Will you please kindly have the g-g-g-goodness and the m-m-m-mercy to do me the favour to b-b-b-begin to commence—w-w-w-w-wy—to start—to make up your mind—to get ready,” he snarled bitterly. “W-w-w-w-wy sometime before midnight—I b-b-b-beg of you… I beseech you… I ask it of you p-p-p-please! for my sake—for all our sakes—for God’s sake!” he cried with frenzied and maddened desperation.
“All right! All right!” his mother cried hastily in a placating and reassuring tone, beginning to move with an awkward, distracted, bridling movement that got her nowhere, since there were two doors to the parlour and she was trying to go out both of them at the same time. “All right!” she said decisively, at length getting started toward the door nearest her. “I’ll just go back there an’slip on a coat—and I’ll be with you in a jiffy!” she said with comforting assurance.
“If you please!” Luke said with an ironic and tormented obsequiousness of entreaty, as he fumbled through his mass of envelopes. “If you please! W-w-w-wy I’d certainly be m-m-m-m-much obliged to you if you would!” he said.
At this moment, however, a car halted at the curb outside, someone got out, and in a moment more they could hear Helen’s voice, as she came towards the house, calling back to her husband in tones of exasperated annoyance:
“All right! Hugh! All right! I’m coming!”—although she was really going toward the house. “Will you kindly leave me alone for just a moment? Good heavens! Will I never get a little peace? All right! All right! I’m coming! For God’s sake, leave me alone for just five minutes, or you’ll drive me crazy!” she stormed, and with a high-cracked note of frenzied strain and exasperation that was almost like hysteria.
“All right, Mr. Barton,” she now said to her husband in a more good-humoured tone. “Now you just hold your horses for a minute and I’ll come on out. The house is not going to burn down before we get there.”
His lean, seamed, devoted face broke into a slow, almost unwilling grin, in which somehow all of the submission, loyalty and goodness of his
