When they were finally satisfied, Jones said, `` I think he's going to give us work ''.

I have to think about it.

I remember being told it would happen so fast people would think it took place overnight.

`` I think Montero did right '', Amy said firmly.

I don't know what makes you think you can get away with this kind of business, and I don't care about that, either.

`` I think you stink, Tom Lord!!

I think you're mean and hateful and stupid, and -- louder ''??

You think that Highlands swindled you and I helped 'em do it.

But there's one thing I never seen or heard of, one thing I just don't think there is, and that's a sportin' way o' killin' a man ''!!

`` But I still think Penny's an awful nice girl, Russ '' --

`` No, I remembered reading about you in the papers and that you lived here, and when it happened all I could think of was '' -- This time she stopped the rush of words herself.

I showed her the shower and tub, and she said, smiling, `` If you really don't mind, I think I'll get clean in the shower, then soak for a few minutes in your tub.

However, when there's a job to be done, I'm a monstrosity of grim determination, I like to think.

I worked for my Uncle ( an Uncle by marriage so you will not think this has a mild undercurrent of incest ) who ran one of those antique shops in New Orleans' Vieux Carre, the old French Quarter.

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 want to be thrown out and I don't think I will.

and now I think we can use the knowledge they passed on to us.

`` 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.

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.

For although I had crossed a corner of the hall on my way to the toilet I still could not tell for sure how far to the rear the darkness extended.

If I could make myself feel the same way

The way his red rubber lips were stretched across his pearly little teeth I thought he was only having a little joke, but, no, he wanted me to bend down from the roar of wind so he could roar something into my ear.

Seeming much relieved, she smiled one of those worth-waiting-for smiles, and I smiled all the way into the bedroom.

And that is the way I first saw her when my Uncle brought her into his antique store.

In the bedroom before the husband and wife find their way to the bed, the lights go on: `` In dull domestic radiance I watch her staring face, still blind, Start wincing in obedience To dirty waters, counters, pots and pans, Waiting below stairs, in her mind ''.

`` Nope, just you, all the time -- sometimes I think it's the only way I'll ever get a decent partner ''.

`` You think I got you and Artie and Herr Schaffner all the way out here just for the boat ride??

I do not know if such a way of life can come to be a self-conscious challenge, but I suspect that it can.

I should like, by the way, to make it clear that I am not using the word `` Persians '' carelessly.

I believe that what I do has some effect on his actions and I have learned, in a way, to commune with drunks, but certainly my actions seem to resemble more nearly the performance of a rain dance than the carrying out of an experiment in physics.

Robert Penn Warren puts it this way in `` Brother To Dragons '': `` The recognition of complicity is the beginning of innocence '', where innocence, I think, means about the same thing as redemption.

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.

She used to tell me, `` When I stand there and look at the flag blowing this way and that way, I have the wonderful, safe feeling that Americans are protected no matter which way the wind blows ''.