Page:Elmer Gantry (1927).djvu/141

 "Oh, issums such cwoss old bear! Issums bad old bear! So cwoss with Lulukins!"

"Lulukins! Great John God!"

"Why, Elmer Gantry!" It was the Sunday School teacher who was shocked now. She sat up on her knees.

"Lulukins! Of all the damned fool baby-talk I ever heard that takes the cake! That's got 'em all beat! For God's sake try to talk like a human being! And don't go squatting there. Suppose somebody came in. Are you deliberately going to work to ruin me? . . . Lulukins!"

She stood up, fists tight. "What have I done? I didn't mean to hurt you! Oh, I didn't, dearest! Please forgive me! I just came in to s'prise you!"

"Huh! You s'prised me all right!"

"Dear! Please! I'm so sorry. Why, you called me Lulukins yourself!"

"I never did!"

She was silent.

"Besides, if I did, I was kidding."

Patiently, trying to puzzle it out, she sat beside him and pleaded, "I don't know what I've done. I just don't know. Won't you please—oh, please explain, and give me a chance to make up for it!"

"Oh, hell!" He sprang up, hat in hand, groping for his overcoat. "If you can't understand, I can't waste my time explaining!" And was gone, relieved but not altogether proud.

But by Tuesday he admired himself for his resolution.

Tuesday evening came her apology; not a very good note, blurry, doubtful of spelling, and, as she had no notion what she was apologizing about, not very lucid.

He did not answer it.

During his sermon the next Sunday she looked up at him waiting to smile, but he took care not to catch her eye.

While he was voluminously explaining the crime of Nadab and Abihu in putting strange fire in their censers, he was thinking with self-admiration, "Poor little thing. I'm sorry for her. I really am."

He saw that she was loitering at the door, behind her parents, after the service, but he left half his congregation unhandshaken and unshriven, muttered to Deacon Bains, "Sorry gotta hurry 'way," and fled toward the railroad tracks.