rying.

Marjorie Clark's companion steered her past and turned toward her, his
twitching features suddenly, and even through their looseness, softened.

"Poor kiddo!" he said. "Just send them to me for reference. I can do
some tall vouching for you."

"The way I feel lately sometimes, honest, I think if I get to getting
the indigoes much deeper, there's no telling where they'll land me. The
game as well as the name ain't all poetry, let me tell you that."

Through the fall of mild snow he could see her face shining out darkly,
and his bare, eager fingers moved toward her arm, and except when the
spasmodic twitch locked his features, his face, too, was thrust forward,
keen and close to hers.

"I've been telling you that for five years, girl."

"Now don't go getting me wrong, Blink."

"If I was what the law calls a free man, Marj, you know what kind of
a proposition I would have put up to you five years ago when I had my
health and my looks and--"

"If you want to make me sore, just tune up on that old song. You ain't
man enough to even get your own little kid out of the clutches of a
mother that's pulling her down to Hades with her. Take it from me, if
there wasn't something in me that's just sorry for you, I wouldn't walk
these here blocks with you. Sometimes when I look at you right hard,
Blink, honest, it looks to me like the coke's got you, Blink."

"Now, Marjie--"

"You wouldn't tell me if it had. But you got the twitches, all righty."

"It's me nerves, Marj; me nerves and you."

"Bah! you got about as much backbone as a jellyfish. Blaming things on a
girl."

"You took the backbone out of me, I tell you."

"Oh no, I didn't; it's been missing since your first birthday."

"Eating out my heart and vitals for you and your confounded highfalutin
amen notions."

"Before you ever clapped eyes on me you was more famous for your arm
muscle than your backbone. I guess I don't remember how your own mother
told me the very day before she died how she tried on her old knees to
keep you out of a marriage with that woman. All that happened way back
in the days when you had your muscles and was head rubber-down at
Herschey's. You knew her kind when you did it, and now why ain't you man
enough to blame yourself for what you are instead of blaming the girl?
Gee!"

"I didn't mean it, Marj. It slipped. S'help me, I didn't. Sometimes I
just don't know what I'm saying, Marj; that's how my mind kinda gets
sometimes.