, that's a good one! The-ball-of-me-foot--squeak!"

"Everybody tiptoeing! Muggs! Somebody's stocking feet! Monkey's. Steps
that aren't honest. All on my ceiling. Monkey never ought to have rented
a room in a respectable house like Mrs. Granady's. Nobody but genteel
young fellows holding down genteel jobs ever had that room before.
Monkey passing himself off as Mr. James Pollard, or whatever it is he
calls himself, just for the cover of a respectable house--or of me, for
all I know. You could have knocked me down with a feather the first time
I met him in the hall. If I did right I'd squeal."

"You would, like hell."

"Of course I wouldn't, but with Mrs. Granady trying to run a respectable
house, only the right kind of young fellows and girls rooming there,
it's not fair. Monkey getting his nose into a house like that and
hatching God knows what! Getaway, what do you keep doing up in that
room--all hours--you and all the pussyfooters?"

"That's the thanks a fellow gets for letting a straight word like
'marry' slip between his teeth; that's the thanks a fellow gets for
honest-to-God intentions of trying to get his girl out of a shirt
factory and dike her out in--"

"But, Getaway, if I was only sure it's all straight!"

"Well, if that's all you think of me--"

"All your big-gun talk about the ring. Of course I--I'd like it. How
could a girl help liking it? But only if it's on the level. Getaway--you
see, I hate to act suspicious all the time, but all your new silk shirts
and now the new checked suit and all. It don't match up with your
twenty-dollar job in the Wall Street haberdashery."

Then Getaway threw out one of his feints of mock surprise. "Didn't I
tell you, Fairylin? Well, whadda you know about that? I didn't tell her,
and me thinking I did."

"What, Getaway, what?"

"Why, I'm not working there any more. Why, Gawalmighty couldn't have
pleased that old screwdriver. He was so tight the dimes in his pocket
used to mildew from laying. He got sore as a pup at me one day just
because I--"

"Getaway, you never told me you lost that job that I got for you out of
the newspaper!"

"I didn't lose it, Marylin. I heard it when it fell. Jobs is like
vaccination, they take or they don't."

"They never take with you, Getaway."

"Don't you believe it. I'm on one now--"

"A job?"

"Aw, not the way you mean. Me and a guy got a business proposition on.
If it goes through, I'll buy you a marriage license engraved o