"Howdy!"
"Cloonan's been running this shebang for two years now, Peachy, and there ain't nothing much she can't learn you about my ways. They ain't hard. Look! Porcelain-lined sink. It's got Twenty-third Street beat some, 'ain't it?"
"Yes, Jerry."
"Fix us a beefsteak supper, Cloonan, and lemme weigh up them groceries I sent out and lemme see your books afterward. Come, Peachy, here, up these stairs. This is the second floor. Pretty neat, ain't it? Her and her mother shopped three more weeks on this oak bed-set. Some little move out here from Twenty-third Street for a little rooming-house queen like you, eh? Neat little bedroom, eh, Peachy? Eh?"
His face was close to her and claret red with an expression she did not dare to face.
"And what's this next room here, Jerry? Ain't it sweet and quiet-looking! Spare room? Ain't it pretty with them little white curtains? Quit, quit, Jerry! You mustn't—you mustn't."
She broke from his embrace, confusion muddling her movements.
"Is this the—the spare room?"
"It is, now. It used to be the old woman's till I laid down on the mother-in-law game and squealed. Yeh, I used to have a little mother-in-law in our house that was some mother-in-law. Believe me, she makes that old devil of yourn look like a prize angel."
"I—This'll be just the room for Dee Dee, Jerry, where she can feel the morning sun and hear the street-cars over there when she gets lonesome. She ought to have the sunniest room, because it's something she can feel without seeing—poor thing. This will be a swell room for poor old blind Dee Dee, won't it, Jerry? Won't it, Jerry dear?"