“Whar you gwine?” Dilsey said.
“I thought I better go round de house en in by de front, so I wont wake up Miss Cahline en dem.”
“You go on up dem backstairs like I tole you en git Benjy’s clothes on him,” Dilsey said. “Go on, now.”
“Yessum,” Luster said. He returned and left by the diningroom door. After awhile it ceased to flap. Dilsey prepared to make biscuit. As she ground the sifter steadily above the bread board, she sang, to herself at first, something without particular tune or words, repetitive, mournful and plaintive, austere, as she ground a faint, steady snowing of flour onto the bread board. The stove had begun to heat the room and to fill it with murmurous minors of the fire, and presently she was singing louder, as if her voice too had been thawed out by the growing warmth, and then Mrs Compson called her name again from within the house. Dilsey raised her face as if her eyes could and did penetrate the walls and ceiling and saw the old woman in her quilted dressing gown at the head of the stairs, calling her name with machinelike regularity.
“Oh, Lawd,” Dilsey said. She set the sifter down and swept up the hem of her apron and wiped her hands and caught up the bottle from the chair on which she had laid it and gathered her apron about the handle of the kettle which was now jetting faintly. “Jes a minute,” she called, “De water jes dis minute got hot.”
It was not the bottle which Mrs Compson wanted, however, and clutching it by the neck like a dead hen Dilsey went to the foot of the stairs and looked upward.
“Aint Luster up dar wid him?” she said.
“Luster hasn’t been in the house. I’ve been lying here listening for him. I knew he would be late, but I did hope he’d come in time to keep Benjamin from disturbing Jason on Jason’s one day in the week to sleep in the morning.”
“I dont see how you expect anybody to sleep, wid you standin in de hall, holl’in at folks fum de crack of dawn,” Dilsey said. She began to mount the stairs, toiling heavily. “I sont dat boy up dar half hour ago.”
Mrs Compson watched her, holding the dressing gown under her chin. “What are you going to do?” she said.