"You mean—"
"You know what I mean."
The lower half of Mr. Lipkind's face seemed to lock, as it were, into a kind of rigidity which shot out his lower jaw. "I'll see Eddie Leonard burning like brimstone before I let him have you!"
"Well?"
"God! I don't know what to say—I don't know what to say!"
"That's your trouble, Sam; you're so chicken-hearted you—"
"My father died when I was five, Clara, and no matter what my feelings are to you, there's no power on earth can make me quit having to be him as well as a son to my mother. Maybe it sounds softy to you—but if I got to pay with her happiness for—ours—then I never want happiness to the day I die."
"In other words, it's the mother first."
"Don't put it that way—it's her—age—first. It ain't what she wants and don't want; it's what she's got to have. My mother couldn't live away from me."
"She could if you were called to war."