Sadie Barnet paused in the act of brushing out the cloud of her dark hair, and with a strong young gesture ran the thread through the needle, knotting its end with a quirk of thumb and forefinger. "It's the drops, Dee Dee, and this gaslight, all blurry from the curling-iron in the flame, makes you see bad." Miss Worte nodded and closed her eyes as if she would press back the tears and let them drip inward. "Yeh, I know. I know." "Sure! Here, lemme do it, Dee Dee. I won't stay out late, dearie, if your eyes are bad. We're only going out for a little spin." Miss Worte lay back on the chintz bedspread and turned her face to the wall. "I should worry if you come home or if you don't--all the comfort you are to me." "You say that to me many more times and you watch and see what I do; you watch and see." "The sooner the better." In the act of fluting the soft ruche about her neck, so that her fresh little face rose like a bud from its calyx, Miss Barnet turned to the full length of back which faced her from the bed. "That's just the way I feel about it--the sooner the better." "Then we think alike." "You 'ain't been such a holy saint to me that I got to pay up to you for it all my life." "That's the thanks I get." "You only raised me because you had to. I been working for my own living ever since I was so little I had to He to the inspectors about my age." "Except what you begged out of my wages." "I been as much to you as you been to me and--and I don't have to stand this no longer. Sure I can get out and--and the sooner the better. I'm sick of getting down on my knees to you every time I wanna squeeze a little good time out of life. I'm tired paying up for the few dollars you gimme out of your envelop. If I had any sense I--I wouldn't never take it from you, nohow, the way you throw it up to me all the time. The sooner the better is what I say, too; the sooner the better." "That's the thanks I get; that's the--" "Aw, I know all that line of talk by heart, so you don't need to ram it down me. You gotta quit insinuating about my ways to me. I'm as straight as you are and--" "You--you--take off that ivory-hand breast-pin; that ain't yours." "Sure I'll take it off, and this ruche you gimme the money to buy, and this red bracelet you gimme, and--and every old thing you ever gimme. Sure I'll take 'em all off. I wish I could take off these gray-top shoes you paid a dollar toward, and I would, too, if I didn't have to go barefoot. It's the last time I borrow from--" "Aw, you commenced that line of talk when you was ten." "I mean it." "Well, if you do, take off them gloves that I bought for myself and you begged right off my hands. Just take 'em off and go barehanded with your little-headed friend; maybe he can buy--" "You--Oh, I--I wish I was dead! I--I'll go barehanded to a snowball feast rather than wear your duds. There's your old gloves--there!"