"The crowd has got your number, all right, kiddo; they know you're out after bigger game. You're a little turncoat, that's what they say about you."
"Turncoat! Who wouldn't turn a coat they was ashamed of? I guess you all don't remember how I used to say, even back in those years when I was taking tickets down at Lute's old Fourteenth Street Amusement Parlors, how when my little minute came I was going to breeze away from the gang down there?"
"I remember, all righty."
"How I was going to get me a job up-town here, where I could get in with a decent crowd of girls, and not be known for the kind down there that you and all of 'em knew I—I wasn't."
"Sure we knew."
"Yes, but what good does that do me? Can a dirty little yellow-haired snip over in the Fancy Fruits give me the once-over and a turn-down? She can. And why? Because I ain't certified. I come from a counterfeit crowd, and who's going to take the trouble to find my number and see if it's real?"
"Aw, now—"
"Didn't a broken-down old granny over in the Thirty-fourth Street house where I roomed give me notice last week, because Addie Lynch found me out one night and came to see me, lit up like a Christmas tree?"
"That's why I say, Marj, stick to the old ones who know you."
"Like May Pope used to say, a girl might as well have the game as the name."