"You see, Jimmie, I--I'm the only person in the world that likes you just for what--you ain't--and hasn't got any pipe dreams about you. That's what counts, Jimmie, the folks that like you in spite, and not because of." "We will now sing psalm number two hundred and twenty-three." "I know there's not a better fellow in the world if he's kept nailed to the right job, and I know, too, there's not another fellow can go to the dogs any easier." "To hear you talk, you'd think I was about six." "I'm the only girl that'll ever be willing to make a whip out of herself that'll keep you going and won't sting, honey. I know you're soft and lazy and selfish and--" "Don't forget any." "And I know you're my good-looking good-for-nothing, and I know, too, that you--you don't care as much--as much for me from head to toe as I do for your little finger. But I--I like you just the same, Jimmie. That--that's what I mean about having no shame. I--do like you so--so terribly, Jimmie." "Aw now--Gert!" "I know it, Jimmie--that I ought to be ashamed. Don't think I haven't cried myself to sleep with it whole nights in succession." "Aw now--Gert!" "Don't think I don't know it, that I'm laying myself before you pretty common. I know it's common for a girl to--to come to a fellow like this, but--but I haven't got any shame about it--I haven't got anything, Jimmie, except fight for--for what's eating me. And the way things are between us now is eating me." "I--Why, I got a mighty high regard for you, Gert." "There's a time in a girl's life, Jimmie, when she's been starved like I have for something of her own all her days; there's times, no matter how she's held in, that all of a sudden comes a minute when she busts out." "I understand, Gert, but--" "For two years and eight months, Jimmie, life has got to be worth while living to me because I could see the day, even if we--you--never talked about it, when you would be made over from a flip kid to--to the kind of a fellow would want to settle down to making a little--two-by-four home for us. A--little two-by-four all our own, with you steady on the job and advanced maybe to forty or fifty a week and--" "For God's sake, Gertie, this ain't the time or the place to--" "Oh yes, it is! It's got to be, because it's the first time in four weeks that you didn't see me coming first." "But not now, Gert. I--" "I'm not ashamed to tell you, Jimmie Batch, that I've been the making of you since that night you threw the wink at me. And--and it hurts, this does. God! how it hurts!" He was pleating the table-cloth, swallowing as if his throat had constricted, and still rearing his head this way and that in the tight collar.