“Oh, good God Almighty! Hell!” said the Reverend Elmer Gantry. “And I suppose you’ve gone squealing to your old man and the old woman!”
“No, I haven’t.” She was quiet, and dignified—dignified as a bedraggled gray kitten could be.
“Well, that’s good, anyway. Well, I suppose I’ll have to do something about it. Damn!”
He thought rapidly. From the ladies of joy whom he knew in the city of Monarch he could obtain information—— But—
“You look here now!” he snarled. “It isn’t possible!” He faced her, on the brick walk through the court-house lawn, under the cast-iron wings of the rusty Justice. “What are you trying to pull? God knows I most certainly intend to stand by you in every way. But I don’t intend to be bamboozled, not by anybody! What makes you think you’re pregnant?”
“Please, dear! Don’t use that word!”
“Huh! Say, that’s pretty good, that is! Come across now. What makes you think so?”
She could not look at him; she looked only at the ground; and his virtuous indignation swooped down on her as she stammered her reasons. Now no one had taught Lulu Bains much physiology; and it was evident that she was making up what she considered sound symptoms. She could only mumble again and again, while tears mucked her clumsy rouge, while her bent fingers trembled at her chin, “Oh, it’s—— I feel so bad—oh, please, dear, don’t make me go on explaining.”
He had enough of it. He gripped her shoulder, not tenderly.
“Lulu, you’re lying! You have a dirty, lying, deceitful heart! I wondered what it was about you that bothered me and kept me from marrying you. Now I know! Thank God I’ve found out in time! You’re lying!”