"Is--that--so! To me that makes not one difference. Put Poil in the city, where it don't take an hour to get to be, and, _ach_, almost anything could happen! Not once did he take his eyes off her--such a grand, quiet boy, too." "When a young man's got thoughts, forty-five minutes' street-car ride don't keep him away." "Nonsense! I always say I never feel hungry till I see in front of me a good meal. If I have to get dressed and go out and market for it I don't want it. It's the same with marriage. You got to work up in the young man the appetite. What they don't see they don't get hungry for. They got to get eyes bigger as their stomachs first." "Such talk makes me sick. Suppose she don't get married, ain't she got a good home and--" "An old maid you want yet! A beau-ti-fool goil like our Poil he wants to make out of her an old maid, or she should break her parents' hearts with a match like Mike Donnely--" "Becky." "Aw, Julius, now we got the chance to rent for three months. Say we live them three months at the Wellington Hotel. Say it costs us a little more; everybody always says what a grand provider you are, Julius; let them say a little more, Julius." "I--I ain't got the money, Becky, I tell you. For me to refuse what you want is like I stick a knife in my heart, but I got poor business, Becky." "Maybe in the end, Julius, it's the cheapest thing we ever done." "I can't afford it, Becky." "For only three months we can go, Julius." "I got notes, Becky, notes already twice extended. If I don't meet in March God knows where--" "Ya, ya, Julius; all that talk I know by heart!" "I ain't getting no younger neither, Becky. Hardly through the insurance examination I could get. I ain't so strong no more. When I get big worries I don't sleep so good. I ain't so well nights, Becky." "Always the imagination sickness, Julius." "I ain't so well, I tell you, Becky." "Last time when all you had was the neuralgia, and you came home from the store like you was dying, Dr. Ellenburg told me hisself right here on this porch that never did he know a man so nervous of dying like you." "I can't help it, Becky." "If I was so afraid like you of dying, Julius, not one meal could I enjoy. A healthy man like you with nothing but the rheumatism and a little asthma. Only last week you came home pale like a ghost with a pain in your side, when it wasn't nothing but where your pipe burnt a hole in your pants pocket to give me some more mending to do." "Just for five minutes you should have felt that pain!" "Honest, Julius, to be a coward like you for dying it ain't nice--honest, it ain't." "Always, Becky, when I think I ain't always going to be with you and the children such a feeling comes over me." "_Ach_, Julius, be quiet! Without you I might just as well be dead, too." "I'm getting old, Becky; sixty-six ain't no spring chicken no more." "That's right, Julius; stick knives in me." "Life is short, Becky; we must be happy while we got each other."