Enough of it seeped to Joe's ears to make him twist his mustache quite furiously when he came out of the telephone booth.

If she was still stuck on that fellow Bud, and couldn't see anybody else, it was high time she was told a few things about him.
It was queer how a nice girl like Marie would hang on to some cheap guy like Bud Moore.

Regular fellows didn't stand any show--unless they played what cards happened to fall their way.

Joe, warned by her indifference, set himself very seriously to the problem of playing his cards to the best advantage.
He went into a flower store--disdaining the banked loveliness upon the corners--and bought Marie a dozen great, heavy-headed chrysanthemums, whose color he could not name to save his life, so called them pink and let it go at that.

They were not pink, and they were not sweet--Joe held the bunch well away from his protesting olfactory nerves which were not educated to tantalizing odors--but they were more expensive than roses, and he knew that women raved over them.