If--if two glasses of beer make you as silly as
they do, Jimmie, why, five hundred dollars would land you under the table
for life."
"Aw-there you go again!"
"I can't help it, Jimmie. It's because I never knew a fellow had what's
he's cut out for written all over him so. You're a born clerk, Jimmie.
"Sure, I'm a slick clerk, but--"
"You're born to be a clerk, a good clerk, even a two-hundred-a-month clerk,
the way you can win the trade, but never your own boss. I know what I'm
talking about. I know your measure better than any human on earth can
ever know your measure. I know things about you that you don't even know
yourself."
"I never set myself up to nobody for anything I wasn't."
"Maybe not, Jimmie, but I know about you and--and that Central Street gang
that time, and--"
"You!"
"Yes, honey, and there's not another human living but me knows how little
it was your fault. Just bad company, that was all. That's how much I--I
love you, Jimmie, enough to understand that. Why, if I thought May Scully
and a set-up in business was the thing for you, Jimmie, I'd say to her, I'd
say, if it was like taking my own heart out in my hand and squashing it,
I'd say to her, I'd say, 'Take him, May.
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