"Sure you did! But who was it steered you into a 'slightly used,' classy place where you could buy a gown that Mrs. Asterbilt wore once to a reception at the Sultan of Sulu's or the Prince of Pilsen's or any of that crowd; who steered you in a place where you could buy a real gown for one-tenth the cost of production?"
"You did, Ysobel. I don't know what I'd 'a' done if Mrs. Fallows hadn't brought you up."
"That little black dream that only let you back twenty-nine-fifty cost three hundred if it cost a cent, and nothing but a snag in the hem and the lace in front as good as new. Gee, I could show this cheap bunch around here how to dress if I had a month's advance in hand!"
"Get off the trunk, Ysobel, and sit here, will you? I want to get it out. Say, if Cottie could see me with the black hat to match! My little sister I was telling you about could—"
"Who you got to thank? Who gave you the right steer? Take it from me, if I hadn't gone along with you, every store on Sixth Avenue would have X-rayed the corner of your handkerchief for the thirty-eight dollars tied up in it and body-snatched you for your own funeral. Even with me along you had a lean like a bent pin for that made-on-Canal-Street, thirty-two-fifty, red silk they hauled out of the morgue to show you. I seen you edgin' for that Kokome model."
"Me and Cottie was always great ones for red. I ought to had the red serge you made so much fun of dyed for mourning, but Cottie—"
"Red! When you, in a tight-lookin' black that hugs you like it was wet, and a black hat with a tilt that Anna Held would buy right off your head, can walk into any office in the row this morning and land in the show-girl row of any chorus on the bills. If you think that's an easy stunt, ask any girl in this house."
"I—I ain't scared a bit now, since I'm going around with you, Ysobel: but gee, if I had to go alone!"
"Fallows does the same thing for all of them. When I was in last spring from first pony in a Middle West company of the 'Merry Whirl'—remind me, and I'll show you my notices—when I was in last spring Fallows dumped a little doll-eyed soubrette on me that didn't do a thing, after I dragged her around to the offices, but grab a part away from me in a Snooky Ookums quartet that Jim Simmons was puttin' out."
"Honest?"