Page:Bad Girl (1929).pdf/51

 impatient to see the end of this. Dot clutched his hand and pulled him back.

"I don't want to be bad friends with Jim. He likes me in his own way. You'll hit him, and whether he clouts the devil out of you or you lick him, he'll throw me out anyway."

"Well, I said that you can come with me." Eddie's eyes looked out of the narrow space he allowed them and found Dot's. For a moment he held her gaze; then she looked away.

"There's my father, too," she murmured incoherently.

"All right. I won't fight with your darling brother. I'll explain like a movie hero that we were dee-tained and I hope he will forgive me for keeping you so late and all that bull."

"Oh, no, Eddie, if he sees you he'll kill me—"

"What do you take me for? Do you think I'd let anybody in the world hurt you or any other dame I happened to be with? I'll start nice, and if he goes to hit I'll—Jesus Christ, I'll tear him apart."

"Then he'll put me out."

She leaned against the wall and gave herself up to a series of dry, racking sobs.

"Well, what are you going to do?" Eddie asked, brusquely. "Stay down here and cry all night or face the music? Come on, don't be a fool."

"No, Eddie, I can't go up with you and I can't go up alone."

"What else is there to do?"

"Will you walk over to Edna Driggs' with me? I'll wake her up and she'll come over."

"What good would she be? If your brother was to hit you she couldn't help."

"But he won't hit if Edna's there. He does what she says."