“But oh!” she said with a sigh. “If only they’d leave me alone an hour a day! If only I could get away for just an hour—”
“W-w-w-wy!” Luke began. “Why don’t you c-c-come with us! F-f-f-frankly, I fink you ought to do it! I fink the change would do you good,” he said.
“Why?” she said rather dully, yet curiously. “Where are you going?”
“W-w-w-wy,” he said, “we were just starting for a little ride…. Mama!” he burst out suddenly in a tone of exasperated entreaty—“Will you k-k-k-kindly go and get yourself ready? W-w-wy, it’s g-g-g-going to get d-d-d-dark before we get started,” he said bitterly, as if she had kept him waiting all this time. “Now, please—I b-b-b-beg of you—to g-g-g-get ready—wy-wy-wy without f-f-f-further delay—now, I ask it of you, for God’s sake!” he said, and then turning to Helen with a movement of utter exasperation and defeat, he shuddered convulsively, thrust his fingers through his hair, and moaned “Ah-h-h-h-h-h!” after which he began to mutter “My God! My God! My God!”
“All right, sir! All right!” Eliza said briskly, in a conciliatory tone. “I’ll just go right back there and put my coat and hat on and I won’t keep you waitin’five—”
“Wy, wy, wy. If you p-p-please, Mama,” said Luke with a tortured and ironic bow. “If you p-p-please.”
At length, they really did get out of the house and were assembled on the curb in the last throes of departure. Luke, breathing stertorously his large unhappy breath, began to walk about his battered little car, casting uneasy and worried looks at it and falling upon it violently from time to time, kicking it in the tyres with his large flat feet, smiting it with a broad palm and seizing it by the sides and shaking it so savagely that its instant dissolution seemed inevitable. Meanwhile Eliza stood planted solidly, facing her house, her hands clasped loosely at the waist and her powerful and delicate mouth pursed reflectively as she surveyed her property—a characteristic gesture that always marked every departure from the house and every return to it, in which the whole power and relish of possession were evident. As for Barton, while these inevitable ceremonies were taking place, he just sat in his car with a kind of sour resigned patience, and waited. And Helen, while this was going on, had taken Eugene by the arm and walked a few paces down the street with him, talking all the time in a broken and abstracted way, of which the reference could only be inferred:
