Twilight Sleep
you going to break his bones for him?' and he sits and looks at you and says: 'Get up a prize-fight for her?'. . . God! I give it up. My own son! We don't speak the same language, that's all."
He leaned back, his long legs stretched under the table, his tall shambling body disjointed with the effort at a military tautness, a kind of muscular demonstration of what his son's moral attitude ought to be.
"Damn it—there was a good deal to be said for duelling."
"And to whom do you want Jim to send his seconds? Michelangelo or Klawhammer?"
He stared, and echoed her laugh. "Ha! Ha! That's good. Klawhammer! Dirty Jew . . . the kind we used to horsewhip. . . Well, I don't understand the new code."
"Why do you want to, Exhibit? Come along. You've got me to look after in the meantime. If you want to be chivalrous, tuck me under your arm and see me back to the hospital."
"A prize-fight—get up a prize-fight for her! God—I should understand even that better than lying on the beach smoking a pipe and saying: 'What can a fellow do about it?' Do!"
Act—act—act! How funny it was, Nona reflected, as she remounted the hospital steps: the people who talked most of acting seldom did more than talk. Her father, for instance, so resolute
