"Look here, dear"—(In Poppy's world the term of endearment went for nothing; it was simply the stamp upon the current coin of comradeship. If only that had been the beginning and the end between them!)
"I haven't a minute—but, I'm going to ask you something" (though Poppy hadn't a minute she was applying herself very leisurely to the making of cigarettes). "Don't go and get huffy at what I'm going to say. Do you happen to owe Dicky anything?"
"Why?"
"Tell you why afterwards. Do you owe him anything?"
"Oh, well—a certain amount—Why?"
"Why? Because I think he owes you something. And that's a grudge. It isn't my business, but if I were you, Rickets, I'd pay him orf and have done with him."
"Oh, that's all right. I'm safe enough."
"You? It's just you who isn't. Dicky's not a bad sort, in his way. All the same, he'd sell you up as soon as look at you. Unless—" (for a moment her bright eyes clouded, charged with the melancholy meanings of the world) "Unless you happened to be an orf'ly pretty woman." She laid her right leg across her left knee and struck a vesta on the heel of her shoe.
"Then, of course, he'd sooner look at me."
Poppy puffed at her cigarette and threw the vesta into the grate with a dexterous jerk of her white forearm. "Look at you first. Sell you up—after." Then Poppy burst into song—