“Daddy-o, let’s turn in here and get a beer,” said Simple. “I never was much on climbing hills and if I go any further, I’ll have too far to walk back. Besides, I got to wake myself up in the morning. My Big Ben won’t alarm, my wrist watch is broke, and my landlady is evil. She says I don’t pay her to climb three flights of steps to wake me up—so I have got nobody to wake me in the morning. That is one reason why I wish I was married, so I would not have to worry about getting to work on time. Also I would have somebody to cook my breakfast. I am tired of coffee, crullers, coffee and crullers, which is all I can afford. Besides, I hate an alarm clock.… Two beers, bartender!… I like to be woke up gentle, some woman’s hand shaking saying, ‘Jess, honey, ain’t you gonna make your shift?’

“And if I was to say, ‘No,’ she would say, ‘Then all right, baby. You been working too hard lately anyhow. Sleep on. We will get up about noon and go to the show.’

“That is the kind of woman I would like to have. Most womens is different. Most womens say, ‘You better get up from there, Jess Semple, and go to work.’ But even that would be better than a brr-rrr-rr-r! alarm clock every morning in your ears. I rather be woke up by a human than a clock.”

“So you would make your wife get up before you, just to wake you up, would you?”

“Which is a woman’s duty,” said Simple. “He that earns the bread should be woke up, petted, fed, and got off to work in time. Then his wife can always go back to bed and get her beauty sleep—providing she is not working herself.”

“No doubt a woman of yours would have to work.”

“Only until we got a toe-holt,” said Simple, “then Joyce could stay home and take care of the children.”

“I haven’t heard you speak of children before,” I said. “You’ll be too far along in age to start raising a family if you don’t soon get married.”

“You don’t have to marry to have a family,” said Simple.

“You wouldn’t care to father children out of wedlock, surely?”

“A man slips up sometimes. But I don’t need to worry about that. Joyce is a respectable woman—which is why I respects her. But she says as soon as we are wedlocked she wants a son that looks like me—which will be just as soon as that Negro in Baltimore pays for Isabel’s divorce. So far that igaroot has only made one payment.”

“I thought that man loved your wife so much he was willing to pay for the whole divorce. What happened?”