“Now look here.  I got a date here in ten minutes, and one or the other of us has got to clear.  You—­you’re one too many, if you got to know it.”

“Oh, I do know it, Jimmie!  I been one too many for the last four Saturday nights.  I been one too many ever since May Scully came into five hundred dollars’ inheritance and quit the Ladies’ Neckwear.  I been one too many ever since May Scully became a lady.”

“If I was a girl and didn’t have more shame!”

“Shame!  Now you’re shouting, Jimmie Batch.  I haven’t got shame, and I don’t care who knows it.  A girl don’t stop to have shame when she’s fighting for her rights.”

He was leaning on his elbow, profile to her.  “That movie talk can’t scare me.  You can’t tell me what to do and what not to do.  I’ve given you a square deal all right.  There’s not a word ever passed between us that ties me to your apron-strings.  I don’t say I’m not without my obligations to you, but that’s not one of them.  No, sirree—­no apron-strings.”

“I know it isn’t, Jimmie.  You’re the kind of a fellow wouldn’t even talk to himself for fear of committing hisself.”

“I got a date here now any minute, Gert, and the sooner you—­”

“You’re the guy who passed up the Sixty-first for the Safety First regiment.”

“I’ll show you my regiment some day.”

“I—­I know you’re not tied to my apron-strings, Jimmie.  I—­I wouldn’t have you there for anything.  Don’t you think I know you too well for that?  That’s just it.  Nobody on God’s earth knows you the way I do.  I know you better than you know yourself.”

“You better beat it, Gertie.  I tell you I’m getting sore.”

Her face flashed from him to the door and back again, her anxiety almost edged with hysteria.  “Come on, Jimmie—­out the side entrance before she gets here.  May Scully ain’t the company for you.  You think if she was, honey, I’d—­I’d see myself come butting in between you this way, like—­like a—­common girl?  She’s not the girl to keep you straight.  Honest to God she’s not, honey.”

“My business is my business, let me tell you that.”

“She’s speedy, Jimmie.  She was the speediest girl on the main floor, and now that she’s come into those five hundred, instead of planting it for a rainy day, she’s quit work and gone plumb crazy with it.”

“When I want advice about my friends I ask for it.”

“It’s not her good name that worries me, Jimmie, because she ’ain’t got any.  It’s you.  She’s got you crazy with that five hundred, too—­that’s what’s got me scared.”

“Gee! you ought to let the Salvation Army tie a bonnet under your chin.”

“She’s always had her eyes on you, Jimmie.  ’Ain’t you men got no sense for seein’ things?  Since the day they moved the Gents’ Furnishings across from the Ladies’ Neckwear she’s had you spotted.  Her goings-on used to leak down to the basement, alrighty.  She’s not a good girl, May ain’t, Jimmie.  She ain’t, and you know it.  Is she?  Is she?”