"I cannot lose," Jimmie says.
"Look," I says, "I think I has had sufficient. I am going."
"I cannot lose," Jimmie says, "and, if I do, they will not call me Wee Willie no more. Guys like Moe Prentice will give me the laugh. I got to keep on winning. I cannot stop now."
"You has not got to do nothing but die," I says, "and if what guys like Moe Prentice says means more to you than Ditsy, here, I would go on off and die if I was you."
"What about your grand piano?" Jimmie says to Ditsy.
"I hate it," Ditsy says through her fingers. "I would like a c-c-canary b-b-bird."
"But I cannot lose," Jimmie says, shaking his fist. "I cannot—unless—" And he quits shaking his fist and uncloses it and looks at it like he expects to find it has varicose veins. And he looks at Ditsy setting there on the floor.
"You mean what you said?" he says.
Ditsy makes a kind of soft ooooooing noise like a stable hound what has been stepped on.
"O.K.," Jimmie says. "O.K." He gets up and sort of wavers a minute and then he goes out and Ditsy keeps on crying and I clears my throat once or twice and wishes she is a horse so as I could gentle her and then Jimmie comes back in and he is carting this here bridle.