"It's much you care about leavin' me alone or not when you can run round nights like a—like a—"
"Don't begin, Angie. A girl's got to have fun once in a while! Gee! the way you been holding on to me! I—I ain't even met the fellows like the other girls. All you think I like to do is sit home nights and sew. Look at the other girls. Look at Mamie Plute—she's five years younger'n me—only twenty-three; and she—"
"That's the thanks I get for protectin' and watchin' and raisin' and—"
"Aw, Angie, I—"
"Don't Angie me!"
"I—I ain't a kid—the way you fuss at me!"
They turned into their apartment house. A fire-escape ran zigzag down its front, and on each side of the entrance ash-cans stood sentinel. At each landing of their four flights up a blob of gas-light filled the hallway with dim yellow fog, and from the cracks of closed doors came the heterogeneous smells of steam, hot vapors, and damp—the intermittent crying of children.
After the first and second flights Miss Angie paused and leaned against the wall. Her breath came from between her dry lips like pants from an engine, and beneath her eyes the parchment skin wrinkled and hung in small sacs like those under the eyes of a veteran pelican.
"You take your time comin', Angie. I'll go ahead and light up and put on some coffee for you—some real hot coffee."
Tillie ran lightly up the stairs. Through the opacity of the fog her small, dark face was outlined as dimly as a ghost's, with somber eyes burning in the sockets. Theirs was the last of a long hall of closed doors—drab-looking doors with perpendicular panels and white-china knobs.