te here now any minute, Gert, and the sooner you----"

"You're the guy who passed up the Sixty-first for the Safety First
regiment."

"I'll show you my regiment some day."

"I--I know you're not tied to my apron-strings, Jimmie. I--I wouldn't
have you there for anything. Don't you think I know you too well for
that? That's just it. Nobody on God's earth knows you the way I do. I
know you better than you know yourself."

"You better beat it, Gertie. I tell you I'm getting sore."

Her face flashed from him to the door and back again, her anxiety almost
edged with hysteria. "Come on, Jimmie--out the side entrance before she
gets here. May Scully ain't the company for you. You think if she was,
honey, I'd--I'd see myself come butting in between you this way,
like--like a--common girl? She's not the girl to keep you straight.
Honest to God she's not, honey."

"My business is my business, let me tell you that."

"She's speedy, Jimmie. She was the speediest girl on the main floor, and
now that she's come into those five hundred, instead of planting it for
a rainy day, she's quit work and gone plumb crazy with it."

"When I want advice about my friends I ask for it."

"It's not the good name that worries me, Jimmie, because she ain't got
any. It's you. She's got you crazy with that five hundred, too--that's
what's got me scared."

"Gee! you ought to let the Salvation Army tie a bonnet under your
chin."

"She's always had her eyes on you, Jimmie. Ain't you men got no sense
for seein' things? Since the day they moved the Gents' Furnishings
across from the Ladies' Neckwear she's had you spotted. Her goings-on
used to leak down to the basement, alrighty. She's not a good girl, May
ain't, Jimmie. She ain't, and you know it. Is she? Is she?"

"Aw!" said Jimmie Batch.

"You see! See! Ain't got the nerve to answer, have you?"

"Aw--maybe I know, too that she's not the kind of a girl that would turn
up where she's not----"

"If you wasn't a classy-looking kind of boy, Jimmie, that a fly girl
like May likes to be seen out with, she couldn't find you with
magnifying glasses, not if you was born with the golden rule in your
mouth and had swallowed it. She's not the kind of girl, Jimmie, a fellow
like you needs behind him. If--if you was ever to marry her and get your
hands on them five hundred dollars----"

"It would be my business."

"It'll be your ruination. You're not strong enough to stand up under
nothing like th