"I didn't want to let out to her, Herman. I wanted to make a quiet get-away, you know I did. But she nagged me! She nagged me!"
"Ma, you shouldn't—"
"She heard us last night and Heaven knows how many nights before that.
She's wise. She knows. She knows it's been a year of prison here for—"
"Oh, my poor boy! Prison! A girl like her finds herself married into one of the most genteel families in St. Louis, a girl what never in her life was used to even decent sheets to sleep on!"
"Ma!"
"Till three o'clock in the afternoon she told me herself how her and them girls used to sleep, two and three in a boarding-house room, and such a mess!"
"Ma, if you and Sadie don't cut out this rowing I'll put on my hat and go back down-town where I came from. What is this, anyway, a barroom or a home out on Washington Boulevard? You want grandma to hear you? Ma! Sadie!"
"My poor boy! My poor boy!"
"I didn't start it, Herm. I was sitting up here quiet. All I ask, Herm, is for you to take me back to New York to-morrow night on your trip. Let me go, Herm, for—for an indefinite stay. It ain't this house, Herm, and it ain't your mother or your sister and—-and it ain't you—it ain't any one. It's all of you put together! I can't stand the speed out here! There ain't none!"
"I guess she wants, Hermie, for her bad-girl notions you should give up the best retail business in St. Louis and take her to live in New York, where she can always be in with that nix-nux theatri—"