“Too Berculosis!” Sara Juke’s hand flew to her little breast. “Too Berculosis! Hat, you—you don’t—”
“Sure I don’t. I ain’t saying it’s that—only I wanna scare you up a little. I ain’t saying it’s that; but a girl that lets a cold hang on like you do and runs round half the night, and don’t eat right, can make friends with almost anything, from measles to T.B.”
Stars came out once more in Sara Juke’s eyes, and her lips warmed and curved to their smile. She moistened with her forefinger a yellow spit curl that lay like a caress on her cheek. “Gee, you oughtta be writing scare heads for the Evening Gazette!”
Hattie Krakow ran her hand over her smooth salt-and-pepper hair and sold a marked-down flannellette petticoat.
“I can’t throw no scare into you so long as you got him on your mind. Oh, lud! There he starts now—that quickstep dance again!”
A quick red ran up into Miss Juke’s hair and she inclined forward in the attitude of listening as the lively air continued.
“The silly! Honest, ain’t he the silly? He said he was going to play that for me the first thing this morning. We dance it so swell together and all. Aw, I thought he’d forget. Ain’t he the silly—remembering me?”
The red flowed persistently higher.
“Silly ain’t no name for him, with his square, Charley-boy face and polished hair; and—”
“You let him alone, Hattie Krakow! What’s it to you if—”