“I thank you,” Bundren says. “We wouldn’t discommode you. We got a little something in the basket. We can make out.”
“Well,” I says, “since you are so particular about your womenfolks, I am too. And when folks stops with us at mealtime and won’t come to the table, my wife takes it as a insult.”
So the girl went on to the kitchen to help Rachel. And then Jewel come to me.
“Sho,” I says. “Help yourself outen the loft. Feed him when you bait the mules.”
“I rather pay you for him,” he says.
“What for?” I says. “I wouldn’t begrudge no man a bait for his horse.”
“I rather pay you,” he says; I thought he said extra.
“Extra for what?” I says. “Won’t he eat hay and corn?”
“Extra feed,” he says. “I feed him a little extra and I don’t want him beholden to no man.”
“You can’t buy no feed from me, boy,” I says. “And if he can eat that loft clean, I’ll help you load the barn on to the wagon in the morning.”
“He ain’t never been beholden to no man,” he says. “I rather pay you for it.”
And if I had my rathers, you wouldn’t be here a-tall, I wanted to say. But I just says, “Then it’s high time he commenced. You can’t buy no feed from me.”
When Rachel put supper on, her and the girl went and fixed some beds. But wouldn’t any of them come in. “She’s been dead long enough to get