"Now, kiddo, you got to cut that with me, and cut it quick. If there's two things I can't stand it's nagging and pouting. Cloonan can tell you what pouting can drive me to. I'll beat it out of that girl of mine before she's through with me, and I won't stand it from no one else. Now cut it, Peachy, that's a nice girl." He paced the carpeted space of floor between the dresser and bed, his mouth still on the oblique. "Now cut it, Peachy, I said, and cut it quick." She stood palpitating beside the window, her eyes flashing to his face and fastening there. "God! I--I wanna go." "Where?" Her glance flashed past him out of the window and across the patch of rear lawn. A street-car bobbed across the country; she followed it with eager eyes. "I wanna go." He advanced, conciliatory. "Aw, now, Peachy, a row just the day before we are married. You don't want to start out making me train you just like you was a little kid. If you was a little girl I could beat your little ways out of you, but I wanna be on the level with you and show you how nice I can be. All the things I'm going to give you, all--" "Quit, you! I wanna go! I wanna go!" "You can go to hell, for my part. I'm going to get a steak inside of me before we budge. Quit your fooling. See, you nearly got me sore there. Come, the car won't be back for us until six. Come, Peachy, come." She was past him and panting down the stairs, out across the patch of rear lawn, and toward the bobbing street-car, the streamer of ribbon at her throat flying backward over her shoulder. In the bargain basement of the Titanic Store the first day of the spring opening dragged to its close. In a meadow beside a round pond a tree dripped apple blossoms, each so frail a thing that it fluttered out and away, too light to anchor. In careless similitude the bargain basement of the Titanic Store resuscitated from its storerooms, and from spring openings long gone by, dusty garlands of cotton May blossoms, festooning them between the great white supporting pillars of the basement and intertwining them. Over the white-goods counter and over Sunday, as it were, a papier-mache pergola of green lattice-work and more cotton-back May blossoms had sprung up as if the great god Wotan had built it with a word. Cascades of summer linens, the apple green and the butter yellow, flowed from counters and improvised tables. Sadie Barnet's own mid-aisle bin had blossomed into a sacrificial sale of lawn remnants, and toward the close of the day her stock lay low, depleted. Max Meltzer leaned out of his bower, and how muted his voice, as if it came from an inner throat that only spoke when the heart bade it. "Little one, them remnants went like hot cakes, didn't they?" "Hot cakes! Well, I guess. You'd have thought there was a mill-end sale on postage stamps." "And if you don't look all tired out! If you just don't!" The ready tears swam in her voice.