`` 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.

I loved my garden ''.

`` I loved this valley '', he whispered huskily.

I had come to New Orleans two years earlier after graduating college, partly because I loved the city and partly because there was quite a noted art colony there.

I loved the city and I particularly loved the gaiety and spirit of Mardi Gras.

I had long since begun to lose my general innocence when I lost my trust in you, but this special innocence I lost before ever I loved, through my discovery that one could tremble with desire and even experience a flaming delight that had nothing, nothing whatever to do with friendship or liking, let alone with love.

`` My mother read a book right after I was born and there was a Lilian in the book she loved and I became Lilian -- and eventually I became Paula ''.

My own stern hand has rent the ancient bond, And thereof shall the ending not have end: But not for me, that loved her, to be fond Lightly to please me with a newer friend Then hold it more than bravest-feathered song, That I affirm to thee, with heart of pride, I knew not what did to a friend belong Till I stood up, true friend, by thy true side ; ;

It would be the first time I had ever been completely alone with a girl I loved.

I really loved that boy, and, in a feverish attempt to preserve our marriage and to try to revive the wonderful, wonderful person Letch had once been, I took my troubles to Momma, hoping that her earthy advice would help me.

And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me.

Burns and I had not loved each other.

I treated them fair ''

In the brief moment I had to talk to them before I took my post on the ring of defenses, I indicated I was sickened by the methods men employed to live and trade on the river.

I could see them in my sights.

I would turn away from my writing in the hope of getting a good look at them but I never quite succeeded.

Since they could see me but I not them, their presence in the hall disturbed me.

Now, here was something of obvious importance to me, yet when I reached for the tickets he snatched them away from my hand.

I knew that three or four of them were almost always present in the hall, but what they were doing, and exactly where, I could not tell.

I felt certain that the director, like the afternoon clerk, seldom moved beyond the counter, that the hall, to them, was a jungle, a dark and unwelcome place.

Neither of them, I understood, had been present at the filming session earlier.

I had seen two of them and we would soon be in another city-wide, joyous celebration with romance in the air ; ;

I was aware that when our eyes met we both quickly averted them.

I expected Brassnose -- as a man with a strain of Melanesian in his blood -- to speak to them.

`` I got Margaret Rider in one of them old box cars down there by the quarry ''.

When I question them as to what they mean by concepts like liberty and democracy, I find that they fall into two categories: the simpler ones who have simply accepted the shibboleths of their faith without analysis ; ;

I followed them in the jeep and now they did not care.

`` I suppose because it saves them some loss of body water.

When confronted with a drunk or an insane person I have no notion of what any one of them might do to me or to himself or to others.

I was having lunch not long ago ( apologies to N. V. Peale ) with three distinguished historians ( one specializing in the European Middle Ages, one in American history, and one in the Far East ), and I asked them if they could name instances where the general mores had been radically changed with `` deliberate speed, majestic instancy '' ( Francis Thompson's words for the Hound Of Heaven's Pursuit ) by judicial fiat.