"Yes, T.B."
"Who's he?"
"Gee! you're as smart as a fish on a hook! You oughtta bought a velvet dunce-cap with your lunch money instead of that brown poke-bonnet. T.B. was what I said—T.B."
"Honest, Hat, I dun'no'—"
"For Heaven's sake! Too Berculosis is the way the exhibits and the newspapers say it. L-u-n-g-s is another way to spell it. T.B."
"Too Berculosis!" Sara Juke's hand flew to her little breast. "Too
Berculosis! Hat, you—you don't—"
"Sure I don't. I ain't saying it's that—only I wanna scare you up a little. I ain't saying it's that; but a girl that lets a cold hang on like you do and runs round half the night, and don't eat right, can make friends with almost anything, from measles to T.B."
Stars came out once more in Sara Juke's eyes, and her lips warmed and curved to their smile. She moistened with her forefinger a yellow spit—curl that lay like a caress on her cheek. "Gee! you oughtta be writing scare heads for the Evening Gazette!"
Hattie Krakow ran her hand over her smooth salt-and-pepper hair and sold a marked-down flannelette petticoat.
"I can't throw no scare into you so long as you got him on your mind.
Oh, lud! There he starts now—that quickstep dance again!"