ating me. And the way things are between us
now is eating me."

"I--Why, I got a mighty high regard for you, Gert."

"There's a time in a girl's life, Jimmie, when she's been starved like I
have for something of her own all her days; there's times, no matter how
she's held in, that all of a sudden comes a minute when she busts out."

"I understand, Gert, but--"

"For two years and eight months, Jimmie, life has got to be worth while
living to me because I could see the day, even if we--you--never talked
about it, when you would be made over from a flip kid to--to the kind of a
fellow would want to settle down to making a little--two-by-four home for
us. A--little two-by-four all our own, with you steady on the job and
advanced maybe to forty or fifty a week and--"

"For God's sake, Gertie, this ain't the time or the place to--"

"Oh yes, it is! It's got to be, because it's the first time in four weeks
that you didn't see me coming first."

"But not now, Gert. I--"

"I'm not ashamed to tell you, Jimmie Batch, that I've been the making of
you since that night you threw the wink at me. And--and it hurts, this
does. God! how it hurts!"

He was pleating the table-cloth, swallowing as if his throat had
constricted, and still rearing his head this way and that in the tight
collar.

"I--never claimed not to be a bad egg. This ain't the time and the place
for rehashing, that's all. Sure you been a friend to me. I don't say
you haven't. Only I can't be bossed by a girl like you. I don't say May
Scully's any better than she ought to be. Only that's my business. You
hear? my business. I got to have life and see a darn sight more future for
myself than selling shirts in a Fourteenth Street department store."

"May Scully can't give it to you--her and her fast crowd."

"Maybe she can and maybe she can't."

"Them few dollars won't make you; they'll break you."

"That's for her to decide, not you."

"I'll tell her myself. I'll face her right here and--"

"Now, look here, if you think I'm going to be let in for a holy show
between you two girls, you got another think coming. One of us has got to
clear out of here, and quick, too. You been talking about the side door;
there it is. In five minutes I got a date in this place that I thought I
could keep like any law-abiding citizen. One of us has got to clear, and
quick, too. God! you wimmin make me sick, the whole lot of you!"

"If anything makes you sick, I know what i