"Just think, Jas; here I've drew out my last six hundred, ready to make first payment down on the place and us all ready to begin to farm it. Ain't that worth holding yourself in for? It wouldn't be right, Jas; it would be something terrible if we had to break into that six hundred for medicine and doctors. I don't know what to make of you, honey, all those months so quiet and behaved on your back, and, now that you're getting well, the--the old liquor-thirst setting in. We never will get our start that way, Jas. We got plans, if you don't hinder your poor Teenie. The doctor told me, honey--honest, he did--one of them spells--from liquor could--could take you off just like that. Even getting well the way you are!" "I'm a lump; that's what I am." "You ain't, Jas; you're just everything in the world." "Sponging off a woman!" "'Sponging'! With our own little farm and us farming it to pay it off! I like that!" "Gimme a swig, Teenie. For God's sake gimme a swig!" "Jas--Jas, if you get to cutting up again, I'm going to get me a man-nurse out here--honest I am!" "A swig, Teenie." "Please, Jas--it's only for bad spells--five drops mixed up in your medicine. That's six dollars a bottle, Jas, and only for bad spells." "Stingy gut!" "Looka down there, honey--there's old man Wyncoop's cow broke tether again. What you bet he's out looking for her. See her winding up the road." "Stingy gut!" "You know I ain't stingy. If the doctor didn't forbid, I'd buy you ten bottles, I would, if it cost twenty a bottle. I'm trying to do what the doctor says is best, Jas." "'Best'! I know what's best. A few dollars in my pocket for me to boss over and buy me the things I need is what's best. I'm a man born to having money in his pocket. I'm none of your mollycoddles." "Sure you ain't! Haven't you got over ninety dollars under your pillow this minute? 'Ain't the boy got all the spending-money he wants and nowheres to spend it? Ain't that a good one, Jas? All the spending-money he wants and nowheres to spend it. Next thing the boy knows, he's going to be working the farm and sticky with money. Ain't it wonderful, Jas, never no showing for us again? God! ain't that just wonderful?" He reached up then to stroke her hand, a short pincushion of a hand, white enough, but amazingly inundated with dimples. "Nice old Big Tent!" "That's the way, honey! Honest, when you get one of your nice spells, your poor old Teenie would do just anything for you." "I get crazy with pain. It makes me ugly." "I know, Jas--I know--anyway, you fix it, honey. I 'ain't got a kick coming--a--tub like me to have--you." She loomed behind his cot, carefully out of his range of vision, her own gaze out across the drowsing countryside. A veil of haze was beginning to thicken, whole schools of crickets whirring into it, "If--if not for one thing, Jas, you know--you know what? I think if a person was any happier than me, she--she'd die."