“Nothing—except I always say October is my unlucky month, because it was just a year ago that they moved him and the sheet music down to the basement. Honest, I’m going to buy me a pair of earmuffs! I’d hate to tell you how unpopular popular music is with me.”
“Huh! You couldn’t play on a side comb, much less play on the piano like Charley does. If I didn’t have no more brains than some people—honest, I’d go out and kill a calf for some!”
“You oughtta talk! A girl that ain’t got no more brains than to gad round every night and every Sunday in foul-smelling, low-ceilinged dance halls, and wear paper-soled slippers when she oughtta be wearing galoshes, and cheesecloth waists that ain’t even decent instead of wool undershirts! You oughtta talk about brains—you and Charley Chubb!”
“Yes, I oughtta talk! If you don’t like my doings, Hattie Krakow, there ain’t no law says we gotta room together. I been shifting for myself ever since I was cash-girl down at Tracy’s, and I ain’t going to begin being bossed now. If you don’t like my keeping steady with Charley Chubb—if you don’t like his sheet-music playing—you gotta lump it! I’m a good girl, I am; and if you got anything to in-sinuate; if—”
“Sara Juke, ain’t you ashamed!”
“I’m a good girl, I am; and there ain’t nobody can cast a reflection on—on—”
Tears trembled in her voice and she coughed from the deep recesses of her chest, and turned her head away, so that her profile was quivering and her throat swelling with sobs.
“I—I’m a good girl, I am.”
“Aw, Sara, don’t I know it? Ain’t that just where the rub comes? Don’t I know it? If you wasn’t a good girl would I be caring?”
“I’m a good girl, I am!”