"He—he's bashful about comin', Jimmie. Last night on her knees right here by this bed she told me, Jimmie, with her eyes like saucers, that he's said everything but come right out and ask her."
"What's the matter? Is he tongue-tied?"
"A fine fellow, she says, Jimmie—up to date as a new dime, makin' from thirty to forty a week. Get that, Jimmie? Gawd—forty a week! On forty a week, Jimmie, what they could do for themselves and for you!"
"I wanna look him over first. I knew a fellow in that game got forty a week and ninety days once, too."
"Jimmie!"
"There's a bunch of speculators used to hang round the Forty-second Street telegraph office, with one eye always on the cop and the other always open for rubes. They was all hunchbacks from dodging the law."
"He ain't one of them kind, Jimmie."
"Then why don't he have a roof over his head instead of doing sidewalk business?"
"Ticket-speculatin' is like any other business, Essie says. Profit is profit, whether you make it on a sheet of music, a washboard, or a theayter ticket."
"Then why don't he show his face round here, instead of runnin' her round night after night when she ought to be home sleepin'?"