"Say, Al, loan me a quarter?"
Unhappy pause.
All sportsmen, from polo players and tarpon fishers to Kaffirs in their kraals, like to talk it over afterwards. Al didn't want to interrupt his baseball palaver with Jim. It might last right through supper and until bedtime, as it often did when Jim stayed home.
He had a vast fund of hypotheses to tell Jim again, and some new ones. If he refused Jim the loan their interesting talk would stop. But if he granted it he would be a boob. It was certainly one dilemma.
Jim smiled and repeated his thought. "I'll do as much for you some time. Go on now."
Georgia came in quickly and angrily. "I should think you'd be ashamed, Jim Connor, trying to do a boy."
"Oh, so you've been rubbering, eh?" Jim sneered.
She had; but this, her weakness, was one she shared with many other women—likewise men. In petty lives are petty deeds. Downtown she did not listen, or tattle, or read other people's letters. There were more important matters to attend to.
"I got to have a little loan," said Jim—now was his time for boldness—"to tide me over till Monday."
She was obstinately mute.