"Sure she is, but what's that got to do with it? That girl's like—well, she's like a sister or—or a pal to me, but she's got about as much time for a fellow of my pace, except when she gets blue, as—as the Queen of Sheba has."
"That's what you think, maybe, but everybody else knows she—she's been after you for years, trying—"
"Aw, cut the comedy, madam. Honest, you make me sore. She's nothing to me off the floor but a darn good pal. Say, I can treat her to a sixty-cent table d'hôte twice a week; but don't you think in the back of my head, when it comes to a showdown, that I couldn't even buy silk shoelaces for a girl of her kind. I ain't her pace and we both know it. Bosh!"
"You'd like to be, all right, if—if she didn't have so many rich ones hanging around."
"Just the same, many's the time she's told me if she could land a regular fellow and do the regular thing and settle down on seventy-five a month in a Harlem flat, why she'd drop all this skylarking of hers for a family of youngsters, so quick it would make your head swim."
"Sure, that's just what I say, she—"
"Many's the time she—she's cried to me—just cried, because the kind of life she has to live don't lead to anything, and she knows it."
"I ain't blaming you for liking her, Phonzie; a girl with her figure can make an old dub like me look like—well, I just guess after her I—I must look like thirty cents to you."
"You! Say, you got more real sense in your little finger than three of
Gert's kind put together."
She colored like a wild rose.