All fuzzed over like."

"What's the odds what you say, Blink? You're just not man-size, I
guess."

She was a bleak little figure bowing into the wind, her tippet flapping
back over one shoulder.

"I ain't, ain't I? I 'ain't gone through a living hell sitting on the
water-wagon for you, have I?"

"Try to keep from twitching that way, Blink. You give me the horrors."

"I 'ain't cut out playing stakes, have I? Gad! I can live from Sunday to
Sunday on a pick-up from a little gamble here and a little gamble there.
But when you hollered, I didn't cut it and begin to work up muscle to
get back on the job again, did I? I didn't, did I?"

"You can't pump that into me, Blink."

His voice narrowed to a nasal quality. "I didn't send her and the kid
a whole Christmas box like you wanted me to, did I? I didn't stick a
brand-new fiver in the black-silk-dress pattern, knowing all the while
she'd have it drunk up before she opened the creases out. I didn't, did
I?"

They were approaching the intersection of a wide and white-lighted
cross-town street. The snowfall had lightened. Marjorie Clark let her
gaze rest for the moment upon her companion, and her voice seemed
suddenly to nestle deep in her throat.

"Gee! Blink, if I thought any of the--the uplift stuff I've tried to
pump into you had seeped in. Gee! if I could think that, Blink!"

Tears lay close to the surface of her words, and his lean face was
thrust farther forward in affirmation.

"It has, Marj. All I got to do is to think of you and those big black
eyes of yours shining, and I could lead a water-wagon parade."

"It's the habits, Blink, you got to watch most. For a minute to-night
you looked like coke and--and it scared me. Don't let the coke get you,
Blink. For God's sake, don't!"

"I sent her a fiver, Marj, and a black silk, and a doll with real hair
for the kid. Y'oughtta seen, Marj, real hair on it."

"That was fine, Blink. Fine!"

"Where you going? Aw, come, Marj. For the love of Mike, you're not
going."

"Yes, yes. I got to go. This is Twenty-second Street, my corner. That's
where I room; that fourth house to the right. That dark one. I got to
go."

"Where?"

"Where do you s'pose? Home."

"What's doin' there?"

"N-nothing."

"Whatta you going to do Christmas Eve? Sit in your two-by-four and
twiddle your thumbs?"

Immediate sobs rose in her throat. "Lord!" she said, "I dun'no'! I
dun'no'!"

He set up the jangling again. "It's Christmas Ev