“You can’t be a goody-goody and come out on top in this burg,” Philip said, moodily. “I don’t b’lieve in stealing ’r holding anybody up, but just the same you’ve got to be as tricky as the other side, I’m telling you.”
“That’s always the line around here, but I’m not so sure about it,” Blanche answered. “There’s plenty of people that get by ’cause they can do things better’n other people—’cause they’ve got brains in their heads and not a lotta excuses. ’F ev’rybody was dishonest all the time, they couldn’t make jails large enough to hold ’em. I’m getting tired of all this fake and fake and fake around here. It looks like a bum excuse to me.”
“Since when’ve you become so up’n the air?” asked Mabel. “You’ve been listenin’ some more to your Rosinburgs, ’n Smiths, ’n all the resta them—fellas that walk round without a cent in their pockets, ’n’ tell you how stra-aight they are, ’n’ talk like they owned the earth. They give me a pain in the back. Harry’s tryin’ to make some real money so we c’n all move outa this shack here, but you never give him any credit.”
“Have it your own way,” Blanche replied, with a light disgust. “You won’t talk like that ’f the p’lice ever come up here looking for him.”
“That’s what I’m always afraid of,” said the mother, who had come in from the kitchen. “I get turribul dreams all the time, turribul, an’ I c’n always see your father an’ Harry sittin’ in jail. I’ve always said it’s no use bein’ dishonest, no use. It’s not the right way uh actin’, it’s not, an’ you always get punished for it. I’d much rather live just like we are, plain an’ decint-like, an’ not be worryin’ all the time.”
“I know how you feel ’bout it, ma,” said Blanche, patting her mother’s shoulder and stroking her hair, “but there’s no use in saying anything. Try and tell something to Harry and pa—just try!”
“Aw, ma, don’t be so foolish,” Mabel said, with affection and condescending pity mingled, as she pinched her mother’s cheek. “’F you went round like I do, an’ saw what was goin’ on, you wouldn’t be so worried. Why, there’s fellas gettin’ away with murder all the time, an’ nobody touches them. Big ones, too, the bigges’ they’ve got in this burg.”
“Well, I think ma’s right, in a way,” said Philip, cautiously, “but she don’t know what Harry’s up against. You can’t be straight in this scrapping game.”
“It’s I that always tried to raise all of you to be honest an’ good—it’s no fault uh mine, it’s not,” his mother said, mournfully, as she returned to the kitchen.
The door of Blanche’s room opened and the two Palmers emerged with Rainey, the rival manager. Rainey was a tall, beefy man with a paunch, who wore an immaculate suit of brown checks and sported a gray derby hat and a heavy gold chain on his white linen vest. He was almost totally bald, and his smoothly ruddy face had the look of a politician who had just kissed an unusually homely infant, in the interest of his election. He uttered a few brightly bovine compliments to the women and then departed, after a last whispered talk with the father outside of the apartment door.