"I 'ain't cut out playing stakes, have I? Gad! I can live from Sunday to
Sunday on a pick-up from a little gamble here and a little gamble there.
But when you hollered, I didn't cut it and begin to work up muscle to
get back on the job again, did I? I didn't, did I?"
"You can't pump that into me, Blink."
His voice narrowed to a nasal quality. "I didn't send her and the kid a whole Christmas box like you wanted me to, did I? I didn't stick a brand-new fiver in the black-silk-dress pattern, knowing all the while she'd have it drunk up before she opened the creases out. I didn't, did I?"
They were approaching the intersection of a wide and white-lighted cross-town street. The snowfall had lightened. Marjorie Clark let her gaze rest for the moment upon her companion, and her voice seemed suddenly to nestle deep in her throat.
"Gee! Blink, if I thought any of the—the uplift stuff I've tried to pump into you had seeped in. Gee! if I could think that, Blink!"
Tears lay close to the surface of her words, and his lean face was thrust farther forward in affirmation.
"It has, Marj. All I got to do is to think of you and those big black eyes of yours shining, and I could lead a water-wagon parade."
"It's the habits, Blink, you got to watch most. For a minute to-night you looked like coke and—and it scared me. Don't let the coke get you, Blink. For God's sake, don't!"
"I sent her a fiver, Marj, and a black silk, and a doll with real hair for the kid. Y'oughtta seen, Marj, real hair on it."
"That was fine, Blink. Fine!"