MOONY [violently]: Chuck it all; the whole damn thing—that’s what!

JANE: You mean— [She backs away from him, frightened.] Kill ourselves?

MOONY [laughing impatiently]: Well, no—no! I don’t wanta die! I wanta live!—What I mean is, get out of this place, this lousy town— Smoke, whistles, plants, factories, buildings, buildings, buildings!— You get caught in ’em, you never can find your way out!—So break away quick while you can!—Get out where it’s clean an’ there’s space to swing an axe in! An’ some time to swing it! Oh, God, Jane, don’t you see—see—see?

JANE: Yes. You mean hop a freight train! [Laughs mockingly.]

MOONY: Sure that’s it if you want to! Tell the Dutchman goodbye—tell him to kiss my Aunt Fanny!

JANE [hysterically]: Me with the baby an’ my infection of the breast—you with your axe! We’ll spend Christmas in a boxcar, won’t we, Moony?

MOONY: You bet!—Me with my axe, we’ll chop a way through this world!

JANE [laughing]: What a joke—what a lovely scream that is!

MOONY: A joke, huh? Who said a joke?

JANE: Moony, Moony, my great big wonderful man! He’ll cut a way— [Chokes with laughter.] —through this world!

MOONY [getting sore]: Make fun of me, huh?

JANE: Moony they call him! Down at the plant it’s Moony this, Moony that! All of them making fun of my man, laughing at him right to his face, and he’s so damn dumb he don’t know it! They got your number, they have! The Dutchman’s got your number. You’re just a star-gazer! You oughta put up your tent an’ tell fortunes! Oh, you damn fool! If it wasn’t so funny I could cry, I could cry! You with your axe! We’ll spend Christmas in a boxcar! You’ll chop a way through the world! Ha, ha! You with your axe? What a scream!—Couldn’t even chop down a kid’s Christmas tree—I hadda buy one at the dime store! And that horse— [She gets breathless and hoarse from laughter.] That’s the best one! Brings home a five-dollar hobby-horse when we ain’t even got money enough to pay the hospital bill!

MOONY: I lied to you, Jane. I paid ten-fifty for that little horse.

JANE [aghast]: Ten-fifty? You—you— No, it’s not possible—even you couldn’t—

MOONY: It was worth more than that!

JANE: Worth more? More?! Worth—! [She is breathless.]

MOONY: Sure it was!

JANE: Buys a ten-fifty hobby-horse for a month-old baby— They lock people up for doing less than that!

MOONY: Aw, he’ll grow up to it, Jane. [He is a little abashed.] I had one o’ these things when I was a kid.

JANE: You musta got thrown off it an’ landed on your head!

MOONY: Naw, Dad got drunk one Saturday night, an’ bought me one at a junk-shop. Mother, she felt like you did, when he come home with it. But me, I was nuts about it. Him an’ me, both, we got on the horse—him in back, me in front—an’ sang “Ride a Cock-horse to Danbury Cross.”