“That Lochinvar business may sound good in a poem, but it doesn't go here in Marion—not when it's my business and my girl.”
Dodd raised his voice. He seemed about to become a bit hysterical.
Farr set slow, gripping, commanding clutch about the young man's elbow.
“If your business with me can possibly be any talk about a lady,” he advised, “you'd better come along into the reading-room.”
“It is about a lady,” persisted Dodd when they had swung in behind a newspaper-rack. The room was apparently empty. “You understand what you came butting in upon, don't you?”
“I took it to be a rehearsal of a melodrama, crudely conceived and very poorly played.”
“Say, you use pretty big words for a low-lived iceman.”
“State your business with me if you have any,” Farr reminded him. “I have something else to do besides swap talk with a drunken man—and your breath is very offensive.”
Dodd began to tap a finger on Farr's breast.
“I want you to understand that I've got a full line on you; you have been chumming with a Canuck rack-tender, you deserted a woman, and she committed suicide, and you took the brat—”