"So do I," said Lillian. "I haven't been in lately, though. And there's two now. One on Dyckman Street and one on Two Hundred and Seventh."
"I need some baby ribbon for my underwear," Louise remembered. "Let's go out after we eat and go shopping in Woolworth's."
"All right," Lillian agreed. "We'll each take a dollar and we'll need a truck to bring home what we bought."
"A dollar is all Louise will get," Billy said.
They ate and left the dishes standing on the table in the kitchen. Lillian went to the bedroom to get her hat and coat. Hubert followed her in.
"Got any money?" he asked.
"Now where would I get any money?" she returned. "A poor girl like me who hasn't had her allowance yet this month and is still waiting for twenty dollars she's owed from buying Christmas presents. When are you going to pay me, young man?"
"In the sweet bye-and-bye, kid. Here." He fumbled in his pocket and held a bill out to her. She reached for it and was placing it in her pocketbook when she noticed the denomination of it. It was a one-dollar bill.
"Isn't that what you said you and Louise would each take?" he asked. His tone was low and almost pleading.
She looked up at him and saw his eyes anxiously fixed upon her. "Yes, sure," she said. "That's all right." She stuffed the dollar in her pocket and murmured again, "Yes, sure. That's all right."
He could only spare a dollar. She walked to the foyer to join Louise. A dollar he had given her. Her heart was shaking within her in queer little hot flutters.
