"I'm all black and blue pinching myself, Jimmie."

"Me too."

"Every night when I get home from working here in the flat I say to
myself in the looking-glass, I say, 'Gertie Slayback, what if you're
only dreamin'?'"

"Me too."

"I say to myself, 'Are you sure that darling flat up there, with the new
pink-and-white wall-paper and the furniture arriving every day, is going
to be yours in a few days when you're Mrs. Jimmie Batch?'"

"Mrs. Jimmie Batch--say, that's immense."

"I keep saying it to myself every night, 'One day less.' Last night it
was two days. To-night it'll be--one day, Jimmie, till I'm--her."

She closed her eyes and let her hand linger up to his cheek, head still
back against him, so that, inclining his head, he could rest his lips in
the ash-blond fluff of her hair.

"Talk about can't wait! If to-morrow was any farther off they'd have to
sweep out a padded cell for me."

She turned to rumple the smooth light thatch of his hair. "Bad boy!
Can't wait! And here we are getting married all of a sudden, just like
that. Up to the time of this draft business, Jimmie Batch, 'pretty soon'
was the only date I could ever get out of you, and now here you are
crying over one day's wait. Bad honey boy!"

He reached back for the pink newspaper so habitually protruding from his
hip-pocket. "You ought to see the way they're neck-breaking for the
marriage-license bureaus since the draft. First thing we know the whole
shebang of the boys will be claiming exemption of sole support of wife."

"It's a good thing we made up our minds quick, Jimmie. They'll be
getting wise. If too many get exemption from the army by marrying right
away, it'll be a give-away."

"I'd like to know who can lay his hands on the exemption of a little
wife to support."

"Oh, Jimmie, it--it sounds so funny. Being supported! Me that always did
the supporting, not only to me, but to my mother and great-grandmother
up to the day they died."

"I'm the greatest little supporter you ever seen."

"Me getting up mornings to stay at home in my own darling little flat,
and no basement or time-clock. Nothing but a busy little hubby to eat
him nice, smelly, bacon breakfast and grab him nice morning newspaper,
kiss him wifie, and run downtown to support her. Jimmie, every morning
for your breakfast I'm going to fry----"

"You bet your life he's going to support her, and he's going to pay back
that forty dollars of his girl's that went into his we