"Aw, now, Jimmie, maybe it does sound like nagging, but it ain't, honey. It--it's only my--my fear that I'm losing you, and--and my hate for the every-day grind of things, and----" "I can't help that, can I?" "Why, there--there's nothing on God's earth I hate, Jimmie, like I hate that Bargain-Basement. When I think it's down there in that manhole I've spent the best years of my life, I--I wanna die. The day I get out of it, the day I don't have to punch that old time-clock down there next to the Complaints and Adjustment Desk, I--I'll never put my foot below sidewalk level again to the hour I die. Not even if it was to take a walk in my own gold-mine." "It ain't exactly a garden of roses down there." "Why, I hate it so terrible, Jimmie, that sometimes I wake up nights gritting my teeth with the smell of steam-pipes and the tramp of feet on the glass sidewalk up over me. Oh, God! you dunno--you dunno!" "When it comes to that, the main floor ain't exactly a maiden's dream, or a fellow's, for that matter." "With a man it's different. It's his job in life, earning, and--and the woman making the two ends of it meet. That's why, Jimmie, these last two years and eight months, if not for what I was hoping for us, why--why--I--why, on your twenty a week, Jimmie, there's nobody could run a flat like I could. Why, the days wouldn't be long enough to putter in. I--Don't throw away what I been building up for us, Jimmie, step by step! Don't, Jimmie!' "Good Lord, girl! You deserve better'n me." "I know I got a big job, Jimmie, but I want to make a man out of you, temper, laziness, gambling, and all. You got it in you to be something more than a tango lizard or a cigar-store bum, honey. It's only you ain't got the stuff in you to stand up under a five-hundred-dollar windfall and--a--and a sporty girl. If--if two glasses of beer make you as silly as they do, Jimmie, why, five hundred dollars would land you under the table for life." "Aw--there you go again!" "I can't help it, Jimmie. It's because I never knew a fellow had what's he's cut out for written all over him so. You're a born clerk, Jimmie." "Sure, I'm a slick clerk, but----" "You're born to be a clerk, a good clerk, even a two-hundred-a-month clerk, the way you can win the trade, but never your own boss. I know what I'm talking about. I know your measure better than any human on earth can ever know your measure. I know things about you that you don't even know yourself." "I never set myself up to nobody for anything I wasn't." "Maybe not, Jimmie, but I know about you and--and that Central Street gang that time, and----" "You!"