"It--it ain't that, Blutch; but--but where's it comin' from?"
"With seventy-five bucks in my jeans, girl, the world is mine. Why, before I had my babe for my own, many's the time I was down to shoe-shine money. Up to 'leven years ago it wasn't nothing, honey, for me to sleep on a pool-table one night and _de luxe_ the next. If life was a sure thing for me, I'd ask 'em to put me out of my misery. It's only since I got my girl that I ain't the plunger I used to be. Big Blutch has got his name from the old days, honey, when a dime, a dollar, and a tire-rim was all the same size."
She sat hunched up in the pink-satinet frock, the pink sequins dancing, and her small face smaller because of the way her light hair rose up in the fuzzy aura.
"Blutch, we--we just never was down to the last seventy-five before. That time at Latonia, it was a hundred and more."
"Why, girl, once, at Hot Springs, I had to hock my coat and vest, and I got started on a run of new luck playin' in my shirt-sleeves, pretending I was a summer boy."
"That was the time you gave Lenny Gratz back his losings and got him back to his wife."
"Right-o! Seen him only to-night. He's traveling out of Cleveland for an electric house and has forgot how aces up looks. That boy had as much chance in the game as a deacon."
Mrs. Connors laid hold of Mr. Connors's immaculate coat lapel, drawing him toward her.
"Why, honey, what's eatin' you? I been down pretty near this low many a time; only, you 'ain't known nothing about it, me not wanting to worry your pretty head. You ain't afraid, Babe, your old hubby can't always take care of his girl A1, are you?"
"I wish to God you was out of it, Blutch! I wish to God!"
"The game, Blutch. You're too good, honey, and too--too honest to be in it. What show you got in the end against your playin' pals like Joe Kirby and Al Flexnor? I know that gang, Blutch. I've tried to tell you so often how, when I was a kid livin' at home, that crowd used to come to my mother's--"
"You're too good, Blutch, and too honest to be in it. The game'll break you in the end. It always does. Blutch darling, I wish to God you was out of it!"
"Why, Ann 'Lisbeth, I never knew you felt this way about it."
"I do, Blutch, I do! For years, it's been here in me--here, under my heart--eatin' me, Blutch, eatin' me!" And she placed her hands flat to her breast.