Mrs. Bland was talking to them. They were Miss Holmes and Miss Daingerfield and they quit listening to her and looked at me again with that delicate and curious horror, their veils turned back upon their little white noses and their eyes fleeing and mysterious beneath the veils.
“Quentin Compson,” Mrs. Bland said, “What would your mother say? A young man naturally gets into scrapes, but to be arrested on foot by a country policeman. What did they think he’d done, Gerald?”
“Nothing,” Gerald said.
“Nonsense. What was it, you, Spoade?”
“He was trying to kidnap that little dirty girl, but they caught him in time,” Spoade said.
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Bland said, but her voice sort of died away and she stared at me for a moment, and the girls drew their breaths in with a soft concerted sound. “Fiddlesticks,” Mrs. Bland said briskly, “If that isn’t just like these ignorant lowclass Yankees.