"You're all tired out, ain't you, Jimmie?--too tired to listen to my talk; but you're going to wait up for your sister's young man to-night, ain't you, my boy? Go wet your hair and smooth it down. You'll wanna see him, Jimmie." "Fine chance." "Sure he's coming to-night, Jimmie. I got their supper all waitin'; and, see, there's my flowered wrapper at the foot of the bed, so I can get up and go in when--" "Aw, cut out the comedy, ma! She ain't comin' straight home after the show any more'n a crooked road; and if she does he ain't coming with her." "Jimmie, she promised sure to-night." "Didn't she promise last night and the night before and the night before that?" "But this afternoon when she left for the matinee, Jimmie, I wasn't feelin' so well, and she promised so sure." "Them girl ushers down there is too lively a bunch for her, ma. Ushin' in a theayter is next to bein' in the chorus--only--" "Jimmie!" "Sure it is--only it ain't so good one way, and it ain't so bad another. This new-fangled girl ushin' gets my goat, anyways. It ain't doin' her any good." "Oh, Gawd, Jimmie, don't I know it? I hated to see her take it--her so little and cute and pretty and all! Night-work ain't nothin' for our Essie." "Sure it ain't!" "But what could we do, Jimmie? After I gave out, her six a week in the notions wasn't a drop in the bucket. What else could we do, Jimmie?" "Just you wait, ma! This time next year life'll be one long ice-cream soda for you and her. Wait till my dynamo gets to charging like I want her to--I'll be runnin' this whole shebang with a bang!" "You're a good boy, Jimmie; but a kid of seventeen ain't expected to have shoulders for three." "Just the samey, I showed a draft of my dynamo to the head operator, ma, and he's comin' up Sunday to have a look. Leave it here on the table just like it is, ma. You'll be ridin' in your Birdsong self-charging electric automobile yet!" She let her fingers wander up and down his cheek and across his shoulders and into his uneven nappy hair. "Poor Jimmie! If only you had the trainin'! Miss Maisie was up from the store to-day in her noon-hour and seen it standing here next to my bed; and she thought it was such a pretty-lookin' dynamo, with its copper wires and all." "You didn't let her--" "No--honest, Jimmie! See--it ain't been touched; I didn't even let her go near the table's edge. She wanted to know when I was comin' back to the store--she says the corsets have run down since they got the new head saleslady, Jimmie." "If I'd 'a' been here I'd 'a' told her you ain't going back." "Sometimes I--I think I ain't, neither, Jimmie." "What?" "Nothin'." "When you get well, ma, then I--" "Then I'm going back on my job, Jimmie. Eighteen years--not countin' the three years your papa lived--at doing one thing sort of makes you married to it. I got my heart as set as always, Jimmie, on gettin' you in at the Electric Training School next door. If I hadn't broke down--" "Nix for mine, ma!"