Soldiers Pay by William Faulkner

goat’s eyes immersed her in yellow contemplation.
    â€œGood morning, Cecily.” The rector rose. “I had expected you earlier, on such a day as this. But young girls must have their beauty sleep regardless of weather,” he ended with elephantine joviality. “This is Mr. Jones, Cecily. Miss Saunders, Mr. Jones.”
    Jones bowed with obese incipient grace as she faced him, but at her expression of hushed delicate amazement he knew panic. Then he remembered the rector’s cursed trousers and he felt his neck and ears slowly burn, knowing that not only was he ridiculous looking, but that she supposed he wore such things habitually. She was speechless and Jones damned the hearty oblivious rector slowly and completely. Curse the man: one moment it was Emmy and no trousers at all, next moment an attractive stranger and nether coverings like a tired balloon. The rector was saying bland as Fate:
    â€œI had expected you earlier. I had decided to let you take some hyacinths.”
    â€œUncle Joe! How won—derful!” Her voice was rough, like a tangle of golden wires. She dragged her fascinated gaze from Jones and hating them both Jones felt perspiration under his hair. “Why didn’t I come sooner? But I am always doing the wrong thing, as Mr.—Mr. Jones will know from my not coming in time to get hyacinths.”
    She looked at him again, as she might at a strange beast. Jones’s confusion became anger and he found his tongue.
    â€œYes, it is too bad you didn’t come earlier. You would have seen me more interestingly gotten up than this even. Emmy seemed to think so, at least.”
    â€œI beg your pardon?” she said.
    The rector regarded him with puzzled affability. Then he understood. “Ah, yes, Mr. Jones suffered a slight accident and was forced to don a garment of mine.”
    â€œThanks for saying ‘was forced,’” Jones said viciously. “Yes, I stumbled over that pail of water the doctor keeps just inside the front door, doubtless for the purpose of making his parishioners be sure they really require help from heaven, on their second visit,” he explained, Greek-like, giving his dignity its death-stroke with his own hand. “You, I suppose, are accustomed to it and can avoid it.”
    She looked from Jones’s suffused angry face to the rector’s kind, puzzled one and screamed with laughter.
    â€œForgive me,” she pleaded, sobering as quickly. “I simply couldn’t help it, Mr. Jones. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?”
    â€œCertainly. Even Emmy enjoyed it. Doctor, Emmy cannot have been so badly outraged after all, to suffer such shock from seeing a man’s bare——”
    She covered up this gaucherie, losing most of the speech in her own words. “So you showed Mr. Jones your flowers? Mr. Jones should be quite flattered: that is quite a concession for Uncle Joe to make,” she said smoothly, turning to the divine, graceful and insincere as a French sonnet. “Is Mr. Jones famous, then? You haven’t told me you knew famous men.”
    The rector boomed his laugh. “Well, Mr. Jones, you seem to have concealed something from me.” (Not as much as I would have liked to, Jones thought.) “I didn’t know I was entertaining a celebrity.”
    Jones’s essential laziness of temper regained its ascendency and he answered civilly: “Neither did I, sir.”
    â€œAh, don’t try to hide your light, Mr. Jones. Women know these things. They see through us at once.”
    â€œUncle Joe,” she cautioned swiftly at this unfortunate remark, watching Jones. But Jones was safe now.
    â€œNo, I don’t agree with you. If they saw through us they would never marry us.”
    She was grateful and her glance showed a faint interest (what colour are her eyes?).
    â€œOh, that’s what Mr. Jones is an authority on women.”
    Jones’s vanity swelled and