“Aw!” said Jimmie Batch.

“You see!  See!  ’Ain’t got the nerve to answer, have you?”

“Aw—­maybe I know, too, that she’s not the kind of a girl that would turn up where she’s not—­”

“If you wasn’t a classy-looking kind of boy, Jimmie, that a fly girl like May likes to be seen out with, she couldn’t find you with magnifying glasses, not if you was born with the golden rule in your mouth and had swallowed it.  She’s not the kind of girl, Jimmie, a fellow like you needs behind him.  If—­if you was ever to marry her and get your hands on them five hundred dollars—­”

“It would be my business.”

“It’ll be your ruination.  You’re not strong enough to stand up under nothing like that.  With a few hundred unearned dollars in your pocket you—­you’d go up in spontaneous combustion, you would.”

“It would be my own spontaneous combustion.”

“You got to be drove, Jimmie, like a kid.  With them few dollars you wouldn’t start up a little cigar-store like you think you would.  You and her would blow yourselves to the dogs in two months.  Cigar-stores ain’t the place for you, Jimmie.  You seen how only clerking in them was nearly your ruination—­the little gambling-room-in-the-back kind that you pick out.  They ain’t cigar-stores; they’re only false faces for gambling.”

“You know it all, don’t you?”

“Oh, I’m dealing it to you straight!  There’s too many sporty crowds loafing around those joints for a fellow like you to stand up under.  I found you in one, and as yellow-fingered and as loafing as they come, a new job a week, a—­”

“Yeh, and there was some pep to variety, too.”

“Don’t throw over, Jimmie, what my getting you out of it to a decent job in a department store has begun to do for you.  And you’re making good, too.  Higgins told me to-day, if you don’t let your head swell, there won’t be a fellow in the department can stack up his sales-book any higher.”

“Aw!”

“Don’t throw it all over, Jimmie—­and me—­for a crop of dyed red hair and a few dollars to ruin yourself with.”

He shot her a look of constantly growing nervousness, his mouth pulled to an oblique, his glance constantly toward the door.

“Don’t keep no date with her to-night, Jimmie.  You haven’t got the constitution to stand her pace.  It’s telling on you.  Look at those fingers yellowing again—­looka—­”

“They’re my fingers, ain’t they?”

“You see, Jimmie, I—­I’m the only person in the world that likes you just for what—­you ain’t—­and hasn’t got any pipe dreams about you.  That’s what counts, Jimmie, the folks that like you in spite, and not because of.”

“We will now sing psalm number two hundred and twenty-three.”

“I know there’s not a better fellow in the world if he’s kept nailed to the right job, and I know, too, there’s not another fellow can go to the dogs any easier.”