“Got another guy you like better?”
“Oh! Oh!”
“A queenie can’t quit me first and get away with it, kiddo. I may be a soft-fingered sort of fellow, but a queenie can’t quit me first and get away with it. Ask ’em about me round here; they know me. If anybody in this little duet is going to do the quitting act first it ain’t going to be you. What’s the matter? Out with it!”
“Charley, it ain’t that—I swear it ain’t that!”
“What’s hurting you, then?”
“I gotta tell you. We gotta go easy for a little while. We gotta quit doing the rounds for a while till—only for a little while. Three months he said would fix me. A grand old doc he was!
“I been to the clinic, Charley. I hadda go. The cough—the cough was cuttin’ me in two. It ain’t like me to go keeling like I did. I never said much about it; but, nights and all, the sweats and the cough and the shooting pains was cutting me in two. We gotta go easy for a while, Charley; just—”
“You sick, Sara?” His fatty-white face lost a shade of its animation. “Sick?”
“But it ain’t, Charley. On his word he promised it ain’t! A grand old doc, with whiskers—he promised me that. I—I am just beginning; but the stitch was in time. It ain’t a real case yet, Charley. I swear, on my mother’s curl of hair, it ain’t.”
“Ain’t what? Ain’t what?”