ll hours to
dance-halls with every sporty Charley-boy that comes along."

"You leave him alone! You just cut that! Don't you begin on him!"

"I wouldn't get overheated, and not sleep enough; and--"

"For Pete's sake, Hat! Hire a hall!"

"I should worry! It ain't my grave you're digging."

"Aw, Hat!"

"I 'ain't got your dolly face and your dolly ways with the boys; but I
got enough sense to live along decent."

"You're right pretty, I think, Hat."

"Oh, I could daub up, too, and gad with some of that fast gang if I
didn't know it don't lead nowheres. It ain't no cinch for a girl to keep
her health down here, even when she does live along decent like me,
eating regular and sleeping regular, and spending quiet evenings in the
room, washing out and mending and pressing and all. It ain't no cinch
even then, lemme tell you. Do you think I'd have ever asked a gay bird
like you to come over and room with me if I hadn't seen you begin to
fade like a piece of calico, just like my sister Lizzie did?"

"I'm taking that iron-tonic stuff like you want and spoiling my teeth,
ain't I, Hat? I know you been swell to me and all."

"You ain't going to let up until somebody whispers T.B. in your
shell-pink ear; and maybe them two letters will bring you to your
senses."

"T.B.?"

"Yes, T.B."

"Who's he?"

"Gee! you're as smart as a fish on a hook! You oughtta bought a velvet
dunce-cap with your lunch money instead of that brown poke-bonnet. T.B.
was what I said--T.B."

"Honest, Hat, I dun'no'--"

"For Heaven's sake! _Too Berculosis_ is the way the exhibits and the
newspapers say it. L-u-n-g-s is another way to spell it. T.B."

"Too Berculosis!" Sara Juke's hand flew to her little breast. "Too
Berculosis! Hat, you--you don't--"

"Sure I don't. I ain't saying it's that--only I wanna scare you up a
little. I ain't saying it's that; but a girl that lets a cold hang on
like you do and runs round half the night, and don't eat right, can make
friends with almost anything, from measles to T.B."

Stars came out once more in Sara Juke's eyes, and her lips warmed and
curved to their smile. She moistened with her forefinger a yellow
spit--curl that lay like a caress on her cheek. "Gee! you oughtta be
writing scare heads for the _Evening Gazette!"_

Hattie Krakow ran her hand over her smooth salt-and-pepper hair and sold
a marked-down flannelette petticoat.

"I can't throw no scare into you so long as you got him on your mind.