“You damned fool,” Shreve said, “What the hell do you mean anyway, straggling off here, fooling with these damn wops?”

“Come on,” Spoade said, “They must be getting impatient.”

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?”