I didn't understand why, Clay.

I didn't catch a wink.

He said in a studied voice, `` I didn't do it for you.

I almost didn't tell you ''.

I said that it didn't make any difference to me either, as far as I knew.

You thought I was a Mexican, didn't you, buddy ''??

`` I didn't know.

I didn't get a good look at him at all, his back was to me, and I was so scared It was just somebody in a man's suit.

`` Why '', he went on, `` when Rob asked me if he could make his dive on this trip, I didn't think twice about it.

I didn't mean to pull so hard ''.

Dr. Lalaurie and I didn't even know he was in the house until the night of our ball when he came down the stairs ''.

`` I didn't know I was gonna have company in this car ''.

I really didn't know what he meant.

Like the cowboy in Stephen Crane's `` Blue Hotel '', we run around crying, `` Well, I didn't do anything, did I ''??

A special guard was posted at my end of the bridge to make sure I didn't cross, the ludicrousness of the situation being revealed fully in that everyone else -- men, women, and children, dogs, cats, horses, cars, trucks, baby carriages -- could cross Kehl bridge into Kehl without surveillance.

When I informed her that I didn't, she said she would borrow her brother's and bring it to me later that evening.

In describing it to Professor Baker after it had been chosen for production, he defended his great array of characters by declaring that he had included that many not because `` I didn't know how to save paint '', but because the play required them.

I wanted to wipe my flint, but I didn't dare to, the state my hands were in, just as I didn't dare to do anything about the priming.

I wished to prepare myself but did not even know what sort of clothes I ought to be wearing.

`` I won't even try to thank you ''.

If I even hint at it do you think it will matter that you are his nephew -- and not even a blood nephew ''??

I don't even remember who wrote it but it was one of those 15th or 16th century poets.

`` But knowing you, I know that you're glad to be alive, and grateful -- and sorry because I killed the snake, even though I had to.

They saw it before I did, even with my binoculars.

When I mentioned that for my first long voyage I did not even have the money for the return fare, but had trusted to luck that I would earn a sufficient amount, the young people looked at me doubtingly.

Others mentioned that I might have had to ask friends or even strangers for help and that to be stranded in a foreign country without sufficient funds did not contribute to international understanding.

I granted this might be so, but found the result to be even more attention to form than was the case previously.

Also, I am convinced that if my company were a sole proprietorship instead of a partnership, I would have been even abler to solve long-range problems for myself and my fellow-employees.

I do not suppose you ever heard of F. Scott Fitzgerald, living or dead, and moreover I do not suppose that, even if you had, his legend would have seemed to you to warrant more than a cluck of disapproval.

In any case, Miss Millay's sweet-throated bitterness, her variations on the theme that the world was not only well lost for love but even well lost for lost love, her constant and wonderfully tragic posture, so unlike that of Fitzgerald since it required no scenery or props, drew from the me that I was when I fell upon her verses an overwhelming yea.

Whether you experienced the passion of desire I have, of course, no way of knowing, nor indeed have I wished with even the most fleeting fragment of a wish to know, for the fact that one constitutes by one's mere existence so to speak the proof of some sort of passion makes any speculation upon this part of one's parents' experience more immodest, more scandalizing, more deeply unwelcome than an obscenity from a stranger.

You probably would not remember, since you never seemed to remember even the same moments as I, much less their intensity, one sunny midday on Fifth Avenue when you had set out with me for some final shopping less than a week before the wedding you staged for me with such reluctance at the Farm.

`` I don't have many strays coming to my front door '', he said.

`` I mean, we don't have any way to get there and we can't expect you to quit work just to take us to town ''.

There's someone there I have to see.

I have to think about it.

We'll still have the rifle, and I might be able to round up some more.

As I dug in behind one of the bales we were using as protection, I grudgingly found myself agreeing with Oso's logic, especially when I imagined what would have happened to Missy if Old Knife's large party of screeching warriors had overrun our company.

I have it with me, right here.

) hung on a hook on the wall, and underneath it I could see his tie, knotted, ready to be slipped over his head, a black badge of frayed respectability that ought never to have left his neck.

I was at once disappointed, although just what I had expected him to look like I could not have explained.

As he lowered himself on the chair behind his desk I wondered what this dapper, slightly ridiculous man could possibly have to do with the workings of the hall.

But, by gosh, I want him and I'm going to have him!!

Don't like to bother no one unless we have to, which I figger we do, in your case.

`` I have a little job for you, Charlie.

`` You and I have a little talking to do, Jess.

I would have foregone my romantic chances rather than leave a friend sweltering and dusty and -- Well, at least I wouldn't have shouted back a taunt.

At once my ears were drowned by a flow of what I took to be Spanish, but -- the driver's white teeth flashing at me, the road wildly veering beyond his glistening hair, beyond his gesticulating bottle -- it could have been the purest Oxford English I was half hearing ; ;

I wouldn't have known the difference.