“Just think of it, Zoie, Jimmy will never be able to come and go like a free man again.”
“What do I care how he comes and goes?” exclaimed Zoie impatiently. “If Jimmy had gone when we told him to go, that woman would have had her old baby by now; but he didn't, oh no! All he ever does is to sit around and talk about his dinner.”
“Yes,” cried Jimmy hotly, “and that's about as far as I ever GET with it.”
“You'll never get anywhere with anything,” was Zoie's exasperating answer. “You're too slow.”
“Well, there's nothing slow about you,” retorted Jimmy, stung to a frenzy by her insolence.
“Oh please, please,” interposed Aggie, desperately determined to keep these two irascible persons to the main issue. “What are we going to tell that mother?”
“You can tell her whatever you like,” answered Zoie, with an impudent toss of her head, “but I'll NOT give up that baby until I get ANOTHER one.'
“Another?” almost shrieked Jimmy. It was apparent that he must needs increase the number of his brain cells if he were to follow this extraordinary young woman's line of thought much further. “You don't expect to go on multiplying them forever, do you?” he asked.
“YOU are the one who has been multiplying them,” was Zoie's disconcerting reply.
It was evident to Jimmy that he could not think fast enough nor clearly enough to save himself from a mental disaster if he continued to argue with the shameless young woman, so he contented himself by rocking to and fro and murmuring dismally that he had “known from the first that it was to be an endless chain.”