"Charley, aren't you tired painting this old town yet? Ain't there just nothing will bring you to your senses? Honest, this morning's papers are a disgrace. You--you won't catch me along again." He slid his arm, all for ingratiating, back into hers. "Come now, honey; you know you like me for my speed." She would not smile. "Honest, Charley, you're the limit." "But you like me just the same. Now don't you, Loo?" She looked at him sidewise. "You've been drinking, Charley." He felt of his face. "Not a drop, Loo. I need a shave, that's all." "Look at your stud--loose." He jammed a diamond whip curling back upon itself into his maroon scarf. He was slightly heavy, so that his hands dimpled at the knuckle, and above the soft collar, joined beneath the scarf with a goldbar pin, his chin threatened but did not repeat itself. "I got to go now, Charley; there's a North End car coming." "Aw, now, sweetness, what's the idea? Didn't you walk down here to pick me up?" An immediate flush stung her face. "Well, of all the darn conceit! Can't a girl walk down to the loop to catch her car and stretch her legs after she's been cooped up all day, without a few of you boys throwing a bouquet or two at yourselves?" "I got to hand it you, Loo; when you walk down this street, you make every girl in town look warmed over." "Do you like it, Charley? It's that checked jacket I bought at Hamlin's sale last year made over." "Say, it's classy! You look like all the money in the world, honey." "Huh, two yards of coat-lining, forty-four cents, and Ida Bell's last year's office-hat reblocked, sixty-five." "You're the show-piece of the town, all right. Come on; let's pick up a crowd and muss-up Claxton Road a little." "I meant what I said, Charley. After the cuttings-up of last night and the night before I'm quits. Maybe Charley Cox can afford to get himself talked about because he's Charley Cox, but a girl like me with a job to hold down, and the way ma and Ida Bell were sitting up in their nightgowns, green around the gills, when I got home last night--nix! I'm getting myself talked about, if you want to know it, running with--your gang, Charley." "I'd like to see anybody let out so much as a grunt about you in front of me. A fellow can't do any more, honey, to show a girl where she stands with him than ask her to marry him--now can he? If I'd have had my way last night, I'd--" "You was drunk when you asked me, Charley." "You mean you got cold feet?" "Thank God, I did!" "I don't blame you, girl. You might do worse--but not much." "That's what you'd need for your finishing-touch, a girl like me dragging you down." "You mean pulling me up." "Yes, maybe, if you didn't have a cent." "I'd have enough sense then to know better than to ask you, honey. You 'ain't got that fourteen-carat look in your eye for nothing. You're the kind that's going to bring in a big fish, and I wish it to you." "Lots you know."