"I never could be fresh with a boy. Take that time at your party. I bet your brother Ed would have liked me better if I'd have got out in the middle of the floor with him, like he wanted me to and like Gert did, to see who could blow the biggest bunch of suds off his stein. I never could be fresh with a fellow." "That's just the trouble, Mrs. Schump. Stella don't see the difference between what's fresh and what's just fun. Is there anything wrong about one stein of beer in a jolly crowd? A girl can be nice without being goody-good. If there's anything a fellow hates, it's a goody-good. Take a fellow like Arch--you think he'd have any time for me if I wasn't a good-enough sport to take a glass of beer with him maybe once a week when he gets to feeling thirsty? Nothing rough. Everything in moderation, I always say. But there's a difference, Mrs. Schump, between being rough and being a goody-good." "There's something in what you say, Cora. I've had her by me so much, maybe I've tried to raise her a little over-genteel. There ain't one single bad appetite she's got to be afraid of. It's not in her. I used to tell her poor father, one glass of beer could make him so crazy loony he never had to try how two tasted." "I'm bashful, and what you goin' to do about it?" "Say, you and Ed's foreman ought to meet together! Honest, you'd be a pair! Ed brought him to the house one night. Finest boy you ever seen. Thirty-five a week, steady as you make 'em; and when they put in girls to work down at the munitions-plant where him and Ed works, Ed said it was all they could do to keep him from throwing up his job from fright. Whatta you know? A dandy fellow like him, with a dagger-shaped scar clear down his arm from standing by his job that time when the whole south end of the plant exploded. A fellow that could save a whole plant and two hundred lives afraid to face a few skirts! Crazy to get married. Told Ed so. Always harping on his idea of blue eyes and yellow hair, and then, when he gets the chance, afraid of a few skirts!" "That's me every time with fellows. I get to feelin' down inside of me something terrible--scary--and all." "Say, I'll tell you what! I'll get Ed to bring him down to Gert Cobb's party next Saturday night, and you come, too." "I?" "There's two of a kind for you, Mrs. Schump. A fellow that's more afraid of girls than explosions, and a girl that's afraid to blow a little foam off a glass of beer! Them two ought to meet. Me and Arch and Ed'll fix it up. How's that for a scheme? Now say I ain't your friend! Are you game?" "I don't go out tryin' to meet fellows that way." "You see, Mrs. Schump, the way she puts a gold fence around herself?" "Cora's puttin' herself out for you, Stella. There's no harm in a Saturday night's party in the company of Cora and some genteel friends." "Gert Cobb don't know I'm on earth."