"Look! I brought you a carnation one of the operators gimme—one swell little queen, too. You want some of that black medicine, ma?"
"I'm all right now, Jimmie. It was just earlier in the evening I kinda had a spell. Ain't that pink pretty, though! Here, put it in the glass, and gimme a French kiss. Always ashamed like a big baby when it comes to kissin', ain't you? Ashamed to even kiss your old ma!"
"Aw!" He shuffled his feet and bent over her, with the red mounting above the gold collar of his uniform.
"And such a mamma-boy you used to be before you had to get out and hustle—such a mamma-boy, and now ashamed to give your old ma a kiss!"
"Ashamed nothin'! Here, ma, I'll smooth your hair for you the wrong way like Essie used to do when you came home from the store dead after the semiannual clearings."
"No, no, Jimmie; these days I ain't got no more hair left to smooth."
"You look good to me."
"Aw, Jimmie, quit stringing your old ma. How can a stack o' bones look good to anybody?"
"You do."
"Your papa used to say so, too, Jimmie; but in them days my hair was natural curly—little cute, springy curls like Essie's. The first day he seen me he fell for 'em; and the night before he died, Jimmie, with you and Essie asleep in your folding-cribs and me little thinkin' that the next week I'd be back in the department clerking again, he took me in his arms and—"