"Oh, do hush!" implored Cis. "Don't you see that I'm trying to think? Don't talk aloud, Johnnie, please!"
It was then they heard the stairs creak, and a heavy step in the hall. And thought of Big Tom for the first time—having been too enthralled by the roses, until now, to remember anything else. "Oh, quick!" Johnnie was between Cis and the door of her room. He moved aside to let her pass. "Oh!"—but, being panic-stricken, she stepped in the same direction, so that she stumbled against him. Finding himself again blocking her path, "Hurry!" he urged, and dodged the other way. She also dodged that way. Thus they did a kind of frightened side-to-side dance there in the middle of the kitchen floor—as the door opened and Barber appeared, his coat on his arm.
Face to face, with the roses between them, Cis and Johnnie stayed where they were, as if stricken into helplessness by the sight of the longshoreman, toward him turning their beseeching, anxious look. Each reached blindly to touch the other, for strength and sympathy. And the roses, lifted to the level of their lips, swayed to their hard breathing.
Barber lumbered closer. "What y' got there?" he demanded. He flung his coat from him, to light upon the table, where it covered those other flowers which were of cotton.
"R—roses," faltered Cis, her voice scarcely audible.
Now the longshoreman came to loom over them. "Where 'd y' git 'em?" he asked next, staring at the bouquet almost wildly. ("He'll jerk it," thought Johnnie.)
"You—you remember the—the Mr. Perkins?" Cis began, not taking her eyes from Big Tom's face.
Barber did not "jerk" the roses. Instead, he pointed one of those long arms toward the window. "Walk over there," he commanded, "and pitch 'em out!" His arm stayed outstretched.
Cis tried to speak, made as if to plead, but could only swallow. As for Johnnie, he was petrified, mesmerized, and remained in her path, watching those eyes which were bulging so furiously, while that white flash in the left one darted into sight and disappeared, then came and went again.
"Out!" repeated Barber.