"Sure, you're going! A poor little filly like you, sound-kneed, sound-winded, and full of speed, and no thin' but trouble for your Christmas stockin'. A poor little blue-eyed doll like you!"
"A girl's gotta have something! You knew me before I was married,
Jimmie, and there never was a girl more full of life."
"Sure I knew you. But you was a little cold-storage queen and turned me down."
"He—Harry, he never asks me nothing when I come in, and the kid's asleep, anyways."
"Color up there a little, Doll. Where I'm going to take you there ain't nothing but live ones. I'm going to take you to a place where the color scheme of your greenbacks has got to be yellow. Color up there, Doll. You ain't going dead, are you?"
She stretched open her eyes to wide, laughing pools, plowed through the rear-counter debris of pasteboard boxes and tissue-paper, reached for her jacket and tan, boyish hat. A blowy, corn-colored curl caught like a tendril and curled round the brim.
"Going dead! Say, my middle name is Speed! It's like Harry used to tell me when we wasn't no farther along in the marriage game than his sneaking over here from the gents' furnishing three times a day to price bill-folders—he used to say that I was a live wire before Franklin flew his kite."
"Doll!"
"I ain't tired, Jimmie. Not countin' the year and a half I was home before Harry took sick, I been through the Christmas hell just six times. The seventh don't mean nothing in my life. I've seen 'em behind these very counters cursing Christmas with tears in their eyes and spending their merry holiday in bed trying to get some of the soreness out. It takes more than one Christmas to put me out of business."
"Here, lemme tuck that curl in for you, Doll."