at. With a few hundred unearned dollars in your pocket
you--you'd go up in spontaneous combustion, you would."

"It would be my own spontaneous combustion."

"You got to be drove, Jimmie, like a kid. With them few dollars you
wouldn't start up a little cigar-store like you think you would. You and
her would blow yourselves to the dogs in two months. Cigar-stores ain't
the place for you, Jimmie. You seen how only clerking in them was nearly
your ruination--the little gambling-room-in-the-back kind that you pick
out. They ain't cigar-stores; they're only false faces for gambling."

"You know it all, don't you?"

"Oh, I'm dealing it to you straight! There's too many sporty crowds
loafing around those joints for a fellow like you to stand up under. I
found you in one, and as yellow-fingered and as loafing as they come, a
new job a week, a----"

"Yeh, and there was some pep to variety, too."

"Don't throw over, Jimmie, what my getting you out of it to a decent job
in a department store has begun to do for you. And you're making good,
too. Higgins teld me to-day, if you don't let your head swell, there
won't be a fellow in the department can stack up his sales-book any
higher."

"Aw!"

"Don't throw it all over, Jimmie--and me--for a crop of dyed red hair
and a few dollars to ruin yourself with."

He shot her a look of constantly growing nervousness, his mouth pulled
to an oblique, his glance constantly toward the door.

"Don't keep no date with her to-night, Jimmie. You haven't got the
constitution to stand her pace. It's telling on you. Look at those
fingers yellowing again--looka----"

"They're my fingers, ain't they?"

"You see, Jimmie, I--I'm the only person in the world that likes you
just for what--you ain't--and hasn't got any pipe dreams about you.
That's what counts, Jimmie, the folks that like you in spite, and not
because of."

"We will now sing psalm number two hundred and twenty-three."

"I know there's not a better fellow in the world if he's kept nailed to
the right job, and I know, too, there's not another fellow can go to the
dogs any easier."

"To hear you talk, you'd think I was about six."

"I'm the only girl that'll ever be willing to make a whip out of herself
that'll keep you going and won't sting, honey. I know you're soft and
lazy and selfish and----"

"Don't forget any."

"And I know you're my good-looking good-for-nothing, and I know, too,
that you--you don't care as much--as