"I'm taking that iron-tonic stuff like you want and spoiling my teeth, ain't I, Hat? I know you been swell to me and all."
"You ain't going to let up until somebody whispers T.B. in your shell-pink ear; and maybe them two letters will bring you to your senses."
"Gee! you're as smart as a fish on a hook! You oughtta bought a velvet dunce-cap with your lunch money instead of that brown poke-bonnet. T.B. was what I said--T.B."
"For Heaven's sake! _Too Berculosis_ is the way the exhibits and the newspapers say it. L-u-n-g-s is another way to spell it. T.B."
"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 flannelette 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.
"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?"
"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--"
"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!"