“You can take me home, Jimmy Odell. I won’t go into another restaurant with you. I’m not going to be disgraced again.”
“Oh, all right-oh!” said he sulkily. “I guess I can get all the whiskey I want alone without any one preaching to me,” and he turned around as if to leave me. I ran after him and caught him by the arm.
“Jimmy, don’t drink any more.”
He tried to shake off my hand, and he said recklessly:
“What difference does it make? You don’t care anything about me. You wouldn’t really care if I drank myself to death.”
“I would care, Jimmy. I care an awful lot about you.”
Jimmy stopped short in the street.
“Do you mean that? You do care for me?” I nodded. “Very well, then,” said he, “it’s up to you to stop me. If you’ll marry me, I’ll quit the booze. That’s on the level, Marion.”
“Now, Jimmy, you know what I told you before, and yet you couldn’t keep away from that old flask of whiskey. You love it better than me. And I’m not going to marry you till I do see some real signs in you of reforming. Besides, anyway, you’ve got two years still to finish at Harvard, and I guess your people would be crazy if you got married before you graduated.”
“Say, who is marrying, they or me?” demanded Jimmy. “Ah, come along, like a good fellow. Here’s just the joint we want,” and he drew me into a chop house on Washington Street.