He dried his feet swiftly and thrust them into his bedroom slippers, and went to the telephone and gave a number. “That’s the trick, exactly,” he whispered exultantly, and then in hisear was a sleepy masculine voice.
“Fairchild? So sorry to disturb you, but I have it at last.” A muffled inarticulate sound came over the wire, but he rushed on, unheeding. “I learned through a mistake tonight. The trouble is, I haven’t been bold enough with them: I have been afraid of frightening them away. Listen: I will bring her here, I will not take No; I will be cruel and hard, brutal, if necessary, until she begs for my love. What do you think of that?. . Hello! Fairchild?. .”
An interval filled with a remote buzzing. Then a female voice said:
“You tell ’em, big boy; treat ’em rough.”
About the Author
William Faulkner was an American writer, Nobel Prize laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner. A prolific writer, Faulkner is best known for his novels and short stories, including The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, which are set in fictional Yoknapatawpha County, and the Snopes trilogy which includes The Hamlet, The Town and The Mansion. Along with Mark Twain, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams and Harper Lee, Faulkner is considered one of the most important writers of Southern literature, and is known for his experimental style including the use of “stream of consciousness.” Faulkner died in 1962.