“But you always think it’ll be over in a day or two, an what’s the use anyway?”
“The more educated a feller is the more use he is to his class.”
They sat down on a bench with their backs to the playground. The sky overhead was glittering with motherofpearl flakes of sunset. Dirty children yelled and racketed about the asphalt paths.
“Oh,” said Anna looking up at the sky, “I’d like to have a Paris evening dress an you have a dress suit and go out to dinner at a swell restaurant an go to the theater an everything.”
“If we lived in a decent society we might be able to.... There’d be gayety for the workers then, after the revolution.”
“But Elmer what’s the use if we’re old and scoldin like the old woman?”
“Our children will have those things.”
Anna sat bolt upright on the seat. “I aint never goin to have any children,” she said between her teeth, “never, never, never.”
Alice touched his arm as they turned to look in the window of an Italian pastryshop. On each cake ornamented with bright analin flowers and flutings stood a sugar lamb for Easter and the resurrection banner. “Jimmy,” she said turning up to him her little oval face with her lips too red like the roses on the cakes, “you’ve got to do something about Roy.... He’s got to get to work. I’ll go crazy if I have him sitting round the house any more reading the papers wearing that dreadful adenoid expression.... You know what I mean.... He respects you.”
“But he’s trying to get a job.”