"Well, I may be cracked, but my good name ain't."
A stiffening of Miss Hassiebrock took place, as if mere verbiage had suddenly flung a fang. From beneath the sternly and too starched white shirtwaist and the unwilted linen cravat wound high about her throat and sustained there with a rhinestone horseshoe, it was as if a wave of color had started deep down, rushing up under milky flesh into her hair.
"Is that meant to be an in-sinuating remark, Josie?"
"'Tain't how it's meant; it's how it's took."
"There's some poor simps in this world, maybe right here in this store, ought to be excused from what they say because they don't know any better."
"I know this much: To catch the North End street-car from here, I don't have to walk every night down past the Stag Hotel to do it."
At that Miss Hassiebrock's ears, with the large pearl blobs in them, tingled where they peeped out from the scallops of yellow hair, and she swallowed with a forward movement as if her throat had constricted.
"I—take the street-car where I darn please, and it's nobody's darn business."
"Sure it ain't! Only, if a poor working-girl don't want to make it everybody's darn business, she can't run around with the fast rich boys of this town and then get invited to help hem the altar-cloth."
"Anything I do in this town I'm not ashamed to do in broad daylight."