"Yes?"

"Ask her; she's my age and we been on the job together for twenty years. Long before live models was even known in the business, she and me were showing goods in the old Cunningham place on Madison Avenue."

"Even—even back there you was dead set on having good figures around the place, wasn't you, Phonzie?"

"I tell you it's economy in the end, madam, to have figures that can show off the goods to advantage."

"Oh, I'm not kicking, Phonzie, but I was just saying."

"I have been in the business long enough, madam, to learn that the greatest way in the world to show gowns is on live stock. A dame will fall for any sort of a rag stuck on a figure like Gert's, and think the waist-line and all is thrown in with the dress. You seen for yourself Van Ness order five gowns right off Gert's back to-day. Would she have fallen for them if we had shown them in the hand? Not much! She forgot all about her own thirty-eight waist-line when she ordered that pink organdie. She was seeing Gert's twenty-two inches."

"But honest, Phonzie, take a girl like Gert, even with her figure, she—Oh, I don't know, there's something about her!"

"She may rub your fur the wrong way, madam, but under all her flip ways they don't come no finer than Gert."

"No, it ain't that, only she don't always get across. Take Lipton; she won't even let her show her a gown; she's always calling for Dodo instead. Sometimes I think the trade takes exceptions to a girl like Gert, her all decked out in diamonds that—show how—how fly she must be."

"Gertie Dobriner's the best in the business, just the same, madam. She ain't stuck on her way of living no more than I am, but she's a model and she 'ain't got enough of anything else in her to make the world treat her any different than a model."

"I'm not saying she ain't a good thirty-six, Phonzie."

"I got to hand it to her, madam, when it comes to a lot of things. She may be a little skylarker, but take it from me, it ain't from choice, and when she likes you—God! honest, I think that girl would pawn her soul for you. When I was down with pneumonia—"

"I ain't saying a thing against her."

"She's no saint, maybe, but then God knows I'm not, either, and what I don't know about her private life don't bother me."

"Oh, I—I know you like her all right."

"Say, I'll bet you any amount if that girl had memory enough to learn the words of a song or the steps of a dance, she could have landed a first-row job in any musical show on Broadway. She could do it now, for that matter. Gad! did you see her to-day showing off that Queen Louise cloth-of-gold model? Honest, she took my breath away, and I been on the floor with her twenty years."

"Y-yes."

"Keep down your hips and waist-line, Gert, I always say to her, and you are good in the business for ten years yet."

"She should worry while the crop of four carats is good."

"Yes, but just the same a girl like her don't know when her luck may turn. A girl can lose her luck sometimes before she loses her figure."

"Any old time she can lose her luck with you."

"Me!"

"Yes, you!"

Madam Moores bent over the pleats in her napkin. Opposite her, his cigarette held fastidiously aloft, he regarded her through its haze.

"Well, of all things! So that—that's what you think?"

"I—I know."

"Know what?"

"That she's dead strong for you."

"Sure she is, but what's that got to do with it? That girl's like—well, she's like a sister or—or a pal to me, but she's got about as much time for a fellow of my pace, except when she gets blue, as—as the Queen of Sheba has."

"That's what you think, maybe, but everybody else knows she—she's been after you for years, trying—"

"Aw, cut the comedy, madam. Honest, you make me sore. She's nothing to me off the floor but a darn good pal. Say, I can treat her to a sixty-cent table d'hote twice a week; but don't you think in the back of my head, when it comes to a showdown, that I couldn't even buy silk shoelaces for a girl of her kind. I ain't her pace and we both know it. Bosh!"

"You'd like to be, all right, if—if she didn't have so many rich ones hanging around."

"Just the same, many's the time she's told me if she could land a regular fellow and do the regular thing and settle down on seventy-five a month in a Harlem flat, why she'd drop all this skylarking of hers for a family of youngsters, so quick it would make your head swim."

"Sure, that's just what I say, she—"

"Many's the time she—she's cried to me—just cried, because the kind of life she has to live don't lead to anything, and she knows it."

"I ain't blaming you for liking her, Phonzie; a girl with her figure can make an old dub like me look like—well, I just guess after her I—I must look like thirty cents to you."

"You! Say, you got more real sense in your little finger than three of Gert's kind put together."

She colored like a wild rose.

"Sense ain't what counts with the men nowadays; it's looks and—and speed like Gert's."

"Girls like Gert are all right, I tell you; but say, when it comes to real brains like yours—nobody home."

"Maybe not, but just the same it's the girls with sense get tired having the men rave about their smartness and pass on, to go rushing after a empty head completely smothered under yellow curls. That's how much real brains counts for with—with you men."

He flung her a gesture, his cigarette trailing a design in smoke. "Honest, madam, you got me wrong there. A fellow like me 'ain't got the nerve to—to go after a woman like you. A girl like Dodo or Gert is my size, but I'd be a swell dub trying to line up alongside of you, now wouldn't I?"

Tears that were distilled in her heart rose to her eyes, dimming them. Her hand fluttered in among the plates and cups and saucers toward him.

"Phonzie, I—I—"

"You what?"

"I—I—Aw, nothing."

Her head fell suddenly forward in her arms, pushing the elaborate coiffure awry, and beneath the blue-checked apron her shoulders heaved.

He rose. "Madam! Why, madam, what—"

"Don't—don't pay any attention to me, Phonzie. I—I just got a silly fit on me. I'll be all right in a minute."

"Aw, madam, I—I didn't mean to make you sore by anything I said."

"You go now, Phonzie; the whole evening don't need to be spoiled for you just because I went and got a silly fit of blues on. You—you go get some live one like Gert and—and take her out skylarking."

"You're sore about Gert, is that it, madam?"

"No, no. Honest, Phonzie."

"Madam, I—I just don't know what's got you. Is it something I said has hurt your feelings?"

"No, no."

He advanced with an incertitude that muddled his movements, made to cross to her side where she lay with her arms outstretched in the fuddle of dishes, made to touch her black silk sleeve where it emerged from the blue-checked apron, hesitated, sucking his lips in between his teeth, swung on his heel, then around once more, and placed his hand lightly on her shoulder.

"Madam?"

"You—you just go on, Phonzie. I—I guess I'm an old fool, anyways. It's like trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip for me to try and squeeze anything but work out of my life. I—I guess I'm just nothing but an old fool."

"But, madam, how can a fellow like me squeeze anything out of life for you? Look at me! Why, I ain't worth your house room. I'm nothing but a fellow who draws his salary off a woman, and has all his life. Why, you—you earn as much in a week as I do in a month."

"What's that got to do with it?"

"Look, you with a home you made for yourself and a business you built up out of your own brains, and what am I? A hall-room guy that can put a bluff across with a lot of idiot women. Look at me, forty and doing a chorus-man's work. You got me wrong, madam. I don't measure nowheres near up to you. If I did, do you think I wouldn't be settled down long ago like a regular—Aw, well, what's the use talking." He plucked at his short mustache, pulling the hairs sharply.

She raised her face and let him gaze at the ravages of her tears. "Why—why don't you come right out and say it, that I 'ain't got the looks and—the pep?"

"Madam, can't you see I'm only—"

"You—you can't run yourself down to me. You, and nobody else, has made the establishment what it is. I never had a head for the little things that count. That's why I spent my best years down in Twenty-third Street. What did I know about the big little things!—the carriage-call stunt and the sachet-bags in the lining and the blue and gold labels, all little things that get big results. I never had a head for the things that hold the rich trade, like the walking models, or the French accent."

"You got the head for the big things, and that's what counts."

"That's why, when you say you can't line up alongside of me, it's no excuse."

"I—I mean it."

"Just because I got a head for designing doesn't make me a nine days' wonder. Why don't you—you come right out and say what you mean, Phonzie?"

"Why, I—I don't even know how to talk to a woman like you, madam. La-La girls have always been my pace."

"I know, Phonzie, and I—I ain't blaming you. A slick-looking fellow like you can skylark around as he pleases and don't need to have time for—the overworked, tired-out ones like me."

"Madam, I never dreamed—"

"Dreamed! Phonzie, I—I've got no shame if I tell you, but, God! how many nights I—I've lain right here on this couch dreaming of—of—"

"Well?"

"Of you and me, Phonzie, hitting it off together."

"Madam!"

Her head burrowed deeper in her arms, her voice muffed in their depth.

"Madam!"

"How many times I've dreamed, Phonzie. You and me, real partners in the business and—and in everything. Us in a little home together, one of the five-room flats down on the next floor, with a life-size kitchen and a life-size dining-room and—and a life-size—Aw, Phonzie, you—you'll think I'm crazy."

"Madam, why, madam, I just don't know."

"Them's the dreams a silly old thing like me, that never had nothing but work and—and nothing else in her life, can lay right here on this couch, night after night, and—Gawd! I—I bet you think I—I'm just crazy, Phonzie."

For answer he leaned over and took her small figure in his arms, wiping away with his sheer untried handkerchief the tears; but fresh ones sashayed down her face and flowed over her words.

"Phonzie, tell me, do you—do you—think—"

He held her closer. "Sure, madam, I do."

* * * * *

On the wings of a twelvemonth, spring had come around again and the taste of summer was like poppy-leaves between the teeth, and the perennial open shirtwaists and open street-cars bloomed, even as the distant larkspur in the distant field. At six o'clock with darkness came a spattering of rain, heavy single drops that fell each with its splotch, exuding from the asphalt the warming smell of thaw. Then came wind, right high-tempered, too, slanting the rain and scudding it and blowing pedestrians' skirts forward and their umbrellas inside outward. Mr. Alphonse Michelson fitted his hand like a vizor over his eyes and peered out into the wet dusk. Lights gleamed and were reflected in the dark pool of rain-swept asphalt. Passers-by hurried for shelter and bent into the wind.

In Madam Moores's establishment, enlarged during the twelvemonth to twice its floor space, the business day waned and died; in the workrooms the whir of machines sank into the quiet maw of darkness; in the showrooms the shower lights, all but a single cluster, blinked out. Alphonse Michelson slid into a tan, rain-proof coat, turning up the collar and buttoning across the flap, then fell to pacing the thick-nap carpet.

From a mauve-colored telephone-booth emerged Miss Gertie Dobriner, flushed from bad service and from bad air.

"Whew!"

"Get her?"

"Sure I got her. Is it such a stunt to get an address from a customer?"

"Good!"

"I says to her, I says, 'I seen it standing on the sidewalk next to your French maid and I wanted to buy one like it for my little niece.'"

"Can we get it to-night?"

"Yes, proud papa! But listen; I wrote it down, 'Hinshaw, 2227 Casset Street, Brooklyn.'"

"Brooklyn!"

"Yes, two blocks from the Bridge, and for a henpecked husband you got a large fat job on your hands if you want to make another getaway to-night. This man Hinshaw shows 'em right in his house."

"Brooklyn, of all places!"

"Right-oh!"

He snapped his fingers in a series of rapid clicks. "Ain't that the limit? If I'd only mentioned it to you this afternoon earlier, we could have been over and back by now."

"Wait until Monday then, Phonzie."

"Yes, but you ought to have heard her this morning, Gert; it's not often she gets her heart so set. To-morrow being Sunday, all of a sudden she gets a-wishing for one of the glass-top ones like she's seen around in the parks, to take him out in for the first time."

"Oh, I'm game! I'll go, but can you beat it! A trip to Brooklyn when I got a friend from Carson City waiting at his hotel to buy out Rector's for me to-night."

"You go on with him, Gert. What's the use you dragging over there, too, now that you got the address for me. I would never have mentioned it to you at all if I'd have known you couldn't just go buy the kind she wants in any department store. I'll go over there alone, Gert."

"Yes, and get stung on the shape and the hood and all. I bought just an ordinary one for my little niece once, and you got to get them shallow. Anyways, I'm going to chip in half on this. I want to get the little devil something, anyways."

"Aw no, Gert, this is my surprise."

"I guess I can chip in on a present for the kid's month-old birthday."

"Well, then, say I meet you in the Eighty-sixth Street Subway at seven, so we can catch a Brooklyn express and make it over in thirty minutes."

"Yes."

"But it's raining, Gert. Look out. Honest, I don't like to ask you to break your date to hike over there in the rain with me."

"Raining! Aw, then let's cut it, Phonzie. I got a new marcel and a cold on my chest that weighs a ton. She can't roll it on a wet Sunday, nohow."

"Paper says clear and warm to-morrow, Gert; but, honest, you don't need to go."

"You're a nice boy, Phonzie, and a proud father, but you can't spend my money for me. What you bet I get ten per cent. off for cash? Subway at seven. I'll be there."

"I may be a bit late, Gert. She ain't so strong yet, and after last night I don't want to get her nervous."

"I told you she'd be sore at me for taking you to the Ritz ball last night, and God knows it wasn't no pleasure in my life to go model-hunting with you, when I might have been joy-riding with my friend from Carson City."

"It's just because she ain't herself yet. I'm off, Gert. Till seven in the Subway!"

"Yes, till seven!"

* * * * *

When Mr. Alphonse Michelson unlocked the door of his second-floor five-room apartment, a lamp softly burning through a yellow silk lamp-shade met him with the soft radiance of home. Beside the door he divested himself of his rain-spotted mackintosh, inserted his dripping umbrella in a tall china stand, shook a little rivulet from his hat and hung it on a pair of wall antlers.

"That you, Phonzie?"

"Yes, hon, it's me."

'"Sh-h-h-h!"

He tiptoed down the aisle of hallway and into the soft-lighted front room. From a mound of pillows and sleepy from their luxury Millie Moores rose to his approach, her forefinger placed across her lips and a pale mist of chiffon falling backward from her arms.

What a masseuse is Love! The lines had faded from Millie's face and in their place the grace of tenderness and a roundness where the chin had softened. Years had folded back like petals, revealing the heart and the unwithered bosom of her.

He kissed her, pressing the finger of warning closer against her lips, and she patted a place for him on the Mexican afghan beside her.

"Phonzie!"

"How you feelin', hon?"

"Strong! If it ain't raining to-morrow, I'm going to take him out if I have to carry him in my arms. Say, wouldn't I like to feel myself rolling him in one of them white-enamel, glass-top things like Van Ness has for her last one. Ida May tried three places to get one for us."

"They're made special."

"All my life I've wanted to feel myself wheeling him, Phonzie. I used to dream myself doing it in the old place down on Twenty-third Street, when I used to sit at the sewing-table from eight until eight. Gee! I—honest, I just can't wait to see if the sun is shining to-morrow."

He kissed her again on the back of each finger, and she let her hand, pale and rather inert, rest on his hair.

"Is my boy hungry for his din-din?"

"Gee! yes! The noon appointments came so thick I had to send Eddie out to bring me a bite."

"What kind of a day?"

"Everything smooth but the designing-room. Gert done her best, but they don't take hold without you, hon. They can't even get in their heads that gold charmeuse idea Gert and I swiped at the Ritz last night."

"Did you tell them I'll be back on the job next week, Phonzie?"

"Nothing doing. You're going to stay right here, snug in your rug, another two weeks."

"Rave on, hon, but I got the nurse engaged for Monday. How's the Van Norder wedding-dress coming?"

"Great! That box train you drew up will float down the aisle after her like a white cobweb. It's a knock-out."

"Say, won't I be glad to get back in harness!"

"You got to take it slow, Mil."

"And ain't you glad it's all over, Phonzie?"

"Am I!"

"Four weeks old to-morrow, and Ida May was over to-day and says she never seen a kid so big for his age."

"He takes after my grandfather—he was six feet two without shoes."

"You ought to seen him to-day laying next to me, Phonzie. He looked up and squinted, dear, for all the world like you."

A bell tinkled. In the frame of a double doorway a seventeen-year-old maid drew back the portieres on brass rings that grated. In the room adjoining and beneath a lighted dome of colored glass a table lay spread, uncovered dishes exuding fragrant spirals of steam.

"Supper! Say, ain't it great to have you back at the table again, Mil?"

"Oh, I don't know, the way—the way you went hiking off last night to—to a ball."

"Aw, now, hon, 'ain't you got that out of your system yet? For a girlie with all your good sense, if you ain't the greatest little one to get a silly gix and work it to death."

"I just made a civil remark."

"What was the use wasting that ten-dollar pair of tickets the guy from Carson City gave her, when we could use them and get some tips on some of the imports the women wore?"

"I never said to waste them."

"You know it don't hurt to get around and see what's being worn, hon. That's our business."

Tears of weakness welled to her eyes and she stooped over her plate to conceal them.

"I'm not saying anything, am I? Only—only it's right lucky she can fill my place so—so well while I—I got to be away awhile."

Her barbed comment only pricked him to happy thought. He made a quick foray into his side pocket. "I brought up one of these pink velvet roses for you to look at, Mil. It's Gert's idea to festoon these underneath the net tunic on McGrath's blue taffeta. See, like that. It's a neat little idea, hon, and Gert had these roses made up in shaded effects like this one. How you like it?"

The tiny bud lay on the table between them, nor did she take it up.

"All right."

He leaned to pat her cheek. "These are swell potatoes, hon."

Her lips warmed and opened. "I—I told her how to make 'em."

"Give me some more."

She in turn leaned to press his hand. "Such a hungry boy."

"Can I take a peek at the kid before—"

"Aw, Phonzie, and wake him up like you did last night. He'll sleep straight through now till half past twelve; that's why I didn't even tiptoe back in the bedroom myself. The doctor says the first half of the night is his best sleep; let him sleep till half past twelve, dear."

"Aw, just one peek before I go."

"Before you what?"

"I got to go out for a little while to-night, hon. On business."

"Where?"

"Slews. I got to meet him in the Subway at seven and go to Brooklyn shops with him to look over those ventilators I'm having put in the fitting-rooms."

She laid down her fork. "I thought you said he was in St. Louis?"

"He got back."

"Oh!"

"You lay down in the front room and read till I get back, hon, and maybe—maybe I'll bring you a surprise."

The meal continued in silence, but after a few seconds her throat seemed to close and she discarded the pretense of eating.

"Now don't you get sore, Mil; you never used to be like this. It's just because you're not right strong yet."

"I ain't—ain't sore."

"You are. You got a foolish idea in your head, Mil."

"Why should I have an idea? I guess I'm getting all that's coming to me for—for forcing things."

"Now, Mil, I bet anything you're still feeling sore about last night. Aren't you?"

"Sore? It ain't my business, Phonzie, if you can stay out till one o'clock one night and the next want to begin the same thing over again."

"We had to stick around last night, Mil. Gert was drawing off the models under her handkerchief and on the dance program. That's how we got the yellow charmeuse, just by keeping after it and drawing it line for line."

"I know, I know."

"Then give me a kiss and when I come back maybe—maybe I'll bring you a surprise up my sleeve, hon."

She sat beside her cold meal, tears scratching her eyes like blown grit. "It's like I told you this morning, Phonzie; when you get tired, all you got to do is remember I got the new trunk standing right behind the cretonne curtains, and I can pack my duds any day in the week and find a welcome over at—at Ida May's."

"Mil, ain't you ashamed!"

"Why, I could pack up and—and find a welcome there right to-night, if the kid wasn't too little for the night air."

"Mil, honest, I—I just don't know what to make of you. I—I've just lost my nerve about going now."

"I'm not going to be the one to say stay."

With his coat unhooked from the antlers and flung across his arm, he stood contemplating, a furrow of perplexity between his eyes.

"If I—I hadn't promised—"

"You go. I guess it won't be the last evening I spend alone."

"Yes it will, hon."

"I know, I know."

He buttoned his coat and stooped over her, the smell of damp exuding from his clothes.

"Just you lay down in the front room till I get back, Mil. Here, look at some of these new fashion books I brought home. I'll be back early, hon, and maybe wake you and the kid up with—with a surprise."

"Quit!"

"Just a French kiss, hon."

She raised a cold face. He tilted her head backward and pressed his lips to hers, then went out, closing the door lightly behind him.

For a breathing space she remained where he had left her, with her lips held in between her teeth and the sobbing breath fluttering in her throat. The pink rose lay on the table, its beautiful silk-velvet leaves concealing its cotton heart. She regarded it through a hot blur of tears that stung her eyeballs. Her throat grew tighter. Suddenly she sprang to her feet and to the hallway. A full-length coat hung from the antlers and a filmy scarf, carelessly flung. She slid into the coat, cramming the sleeves of her negligee in at the shoulders, wrapping the scarf about her head and knotting it at the throat in a hysteria of sudden decision. Then down the flight of stairs, her knees trembling as she ran. When she reached the bubbly sidewalk, cool rain slanted in her face. She gathered her strength and plunged against it.

At the corner, in the white flare of an arc-light, chin sunk on his chest against the onslaught of rain, and head leading, Alphonse Michelson stepped across the shining sea of asphalt. She broke into a run, the uneven careen of the weak, keeping to the shadow of the buildings; doubling her pace.

When he reached the hooded descent to the Subway, she was almost in his shadow; then cautiously after him down the iron stairs, and when he paused to buy his ticket, he might have touched her as she held herself taut against the wall and out of his vision. A passer-by glanced back at her twice. From the last landing of the stairway and leaning across the balustrade, she could follow him now with her eyes, through the iron gateway and on to the station platform.

From behind a pillar, a hen pheasant's tail in her hat raising her above the crowd, her shoulders rain-spotted and a dripping umbrella held well away from her, emerged Gertie Dobriner, a reproach in her expression, but meeting him with a pantomime of laughs and sallies. A tangle of passengers closed them in. A train wild with speed tore into the station, grinding to a stop on shrieking wheels. A second later it tore out again, leaving the platform empty.

Then Madam Moores turned her face to the rainswept street and retraced her steps, except that a vertigo fuddled her progress and twice she swayed. When she climbed the staircase to her apartment she was obliged to rest midway, sitting huddled against the banister, her soaked scarf fallen backward across her shoulders. She unlatched her door carefully, to save the squeak and to avoid the small maid who sang over and above the clatter of her dishes. The yellow lamp diffused its quiet light the length of the hallway, and she tottered down and into the bedroom at the far end.

A night lamp burned beside a basinette that might have been lined with the breast feathers of a dove, so downy was it. An imitation-ivory clock ticked among a litter of imitation-ivory dresser fittings. On the edge of the bed, and with no thought for its lacy coverlet, she sat down heavily, her wet coat dragging it awry. An hour ticked past. The maid completed her tasks, announced her departure, and tiptoed out to meet an appointment with a gas-fitter's assistant in the lower rear hall.

After a while Madam Moores fell to crying, but in long wheezes that came from her throat dry. The child in the crib uncurled a small, pink fist and opened his eyes, but with the gloss of sleep still across them and not forfeiting his dream. Still another hour and she rose, groping her way behind a chintz curtain at the far end of the room; fell to scattering and reassembling the contents of a trunk, stacking together her own garments and the tiny garments of a tiny white layette.

Toward midnight she fell to crying again beside the crib, and in audible jerks and moans that racked her. The child stirred. Cramming her handkerchief against her lips, she faltered down the hallway. In the front room and on the pillowed couch she collapsed weakly, eyes closed and her grief-crumpled face turned toward the door.

On the ground floor of a dim house in a dim street, which by the contrivance of its occupants had been converted from its original role of dark and sinister dining-room to wareroom for a dozen or more perambulators on high, rubber-tired wheels, Alphonse Michelson and Gertie Dobriner stood in conference with a dark-wrappered figure, her blue-checked apron wound muff fashion about her hands.

Miss Dobriner tapped a finger against her too red lips. "Seventy dollars net for a baby-carriage!"

"Yes'm, and a bargain at that. If he was home he'd show you the books hisself and the prices we get."

"Seventy dollars for a baby-carriage! For that, Phonzie, you can buy the kid a taxi."

In a sotto voice and with a flow of red suffusing his face, Alphonse Michelson turned to Gertie Dobriner, his hand curved blinker fashion to inclose his words.

"For Gawd's sake, cut the haggling, Gert. If this here white enamel is the carriage we want, let's take it and hike. I got to get home."

Miss Dobriner drew up her back to a feline arch. "The gentleman says we'll take it for sixty-five, spot cash."

"My husband's great for one price, madam. We don't cater to none but private trade and—"

"Sure you don't. If we could have got one of these glass-top carriages in a department store, we wouldn't be swimming over here to Brooklyn just to try out our stroke."

"Mrs. Nan Ness, who sent you here, knows the kind of goods we turn out. She says she's going to give us an order for a twin buggy yet, some of these days. If the Four Hundred believed in babies like the Four Million, we'd have a plant all over Brooklyn. Only my husband won't spread, he—he—"

Mr. Michelson waved aside the impending recitation with a sweep of his hand. "Is this the one you like, Gert?"

"Yes, with the folding top. Say, don't I want to see madam's face when she sees it. And say, won't the kid be a scream, Phonzie, all nestled up in there like a honey bunch?"

He slid his hand into his pocket, withdrawing a leather folder. "Here, we'll take this one with the folding top, but get us a fresh one out of stock."

"We'll make you this carriage up, sir, just as you see it now."

"Make it up! We've got to have it now. To-night!"

"But, sir, we only got these samples made up to show."

"Then we got to buy the sample."

"No, no. My husband ain't home and I—I can't sell the sample. We—"

"But I tell you we got to have it to-night. To-morrow's Sunday and the lady who—"

"No, no. With my husband not here, I can't let go no sample. As a special favor, sir, we'll make you one up in a week."

Miss Dobriner stooped forward, her eyes narrow as slits. "Seventy-five, spot down."

Indecision vanished as rags before Abracadabra.

"We make it a rule not to sell our samples, but—"

"That carriage has got to be delivered at my house to-night before ten."

"Sir, that can't go out to-night. It's got to be packed special and sent over on a flat-top dray. These carriages got to be packed like they was babies themselves."

"Can you beat that for luck?" He inserted two fingers in his tall collar as if it choked him. "Can you beat that?"

"The first thing Monday morning, sir, as a special favor, but that carriage can't go out to-night. We got one man does nothing but pack them for delivery."

He plunged his hands into his pockets and paced the narrow aisle down the center of the room. "We got to get that carriage over there to-night if—if we have to wheel it over!"

Miss Dobriner clapped her hands in an ecstasy of inspiration. "Good! We'll wheel it home. We can make it by midnight. What you bet?"

He turned upon her, but with a ray in his eyes. "Say, Gert, that ain't such a worse idea, but—"

"No buts. The night is young, and I know a fellow used to walk from the Bronx to Brooklyn with his girl every Sunday."

"Sure! What's an eight-mile walk on a spring night like this? It's all cleared up and stopped raining. Only, gee! I—I hate to be getting home all hours again."

She flipped him a gesture. "Say, it's not my surprise party you're giving."

"It's not that, Gert, only I don't want to keep her waiting until she gets sore enough to have the edge taken off the surprise when it does come."

"Say, suit yourself. It's not my kid I'm going to wheel out to-morrow. I should worry."

"I'll do it."

"You're not doing me a favor. With my cold and my marcel, a three-hour walk ain't the one thing in life I'm craving."

"I'll roll it over the bridge and be home by twelve, easy. You take the Subway, Gert; it's too big a trot for you."

"Nix! I don't start anything I can't finish."

She cocked her hat to a forward angle, so that the hen pheasant's tail swung rakishly over her face, took an Hellenic stride through the aisle of perambulators, flung her arms across her bosom in an attitude of extravaganza, then tossed off a military salute.

"Ready, march!"

"You're a peach, Gert."

"I've tried pretty near everything in my life. Why not wheel another fellow's baby-carriage for another fellow's wife's baby across Brooklyn Bridge at midnight? Whoops! why not!"

"We're off, then, Gert."

"Forward, march!"

"Keep your eye on the steering-wheel, Phonzie, and remember, ten miles is speed limit on the Bridge. One, two, three! Gawd! if my friend from Carson City could only see me now!"

Out on the drying sidewalk they leaned to each other, and the duet of their merriment ran ahead of them down the meager street and found out its dark corners.

"Honest, Phonzie, won't the girls just bust when they hear this!"

"And Mil, poor old girl, she's right weak and full of nerves now, but she'll laugh loudest of all when she knows why I went with Slews."

"Yes. She-can-laugh-loudest-of-all."

"What?"

"Come on, or we won't get home until morning."

And on the crest of her insouciance she thrust out her arm, giving the shining white perambulator a running push from the rear, so that it went rolling lightly from her and with a perfect gear action down the slight incline of sidewalk. They were after it at a bound, light-heeled and full of laughter.

"Whoops, my dear!"

"Whoa!"

* * * * *

At a turn in the dark street the lights of the Bridge flashed suddenly upon them, swung in high festoons across an infinitude of night. Above, a few majestic stars, new coined, gleamed in a clear sky.

"What do you bet that with me at the wheel we can clear the Bridge in thirty minutes, Phonzie?"

"Sure we can; but here, let me shove."

She elbowed him aside, the banter gone suddenly from her voice.

"No, let me."

She fell to pushing it silently along. Stars came out in her eyes. He advanced to her pace, matching his stride to hers, fancies like colored beads slipping along the slender thread of his thoughts.

"Swell sight, ain't it, Gert, the harbor lights so bright and the sky so deep?"

Silence.

"Seeing so much sky all at once reminds me, Gert. You know about that midnight—blue satin Hertz had the brass to dump back on us because the skirt was too tight. Huh?"

Her eyes were far and away.

"Huh, whatta you know about that, Gert?"

Her hands, gripped around the handle-bars, were full of nerves; she could feel them jumping in her palm.

"Huh, Gert?"

"What you say, Phonzie?"

"All right, don't answer. Moon all you like, for my part." And he fell to whistling as he strode beside her, his eyes on the light-spangled outline of the city.

* * * * *

At twelve o'clock the lights in the lower hall of the up-town apartment-house had been extinguished. All but one, which burned like a tired eye beneath the ornate staircase. The misty quiet of midnight, which is as heavy as a veil, hung in the corridors. Miss Gertie Dobriner entered first and, holding wide the door between them, Alphonse Michelson at the front wheels, they tilted the white carriage up the narrow staircase, their whispers floating through the gloom.

"Easy there, Phonzie!"

"There!"

"Watch out!"

"Whew! that was a close shave!"

"Here, let me unlock the door. 'Sh-h-h!"

"Don't go, Gert. Come on in, and after the big show I'll send you home in a cab."

"Nix! After a three-hour walk, a street-car will look good enough to me."

"Well, then, come on in, just a minute, Gert. I want you to see the fun. What you bet she's asleep in the front room, sore as thunder, too? We'll sneak back and dump the kid in and wheel him in on her."

"Aw no! I—I got to go now, Phonzie."

"Come on, Gert, don't be a quitter. Don't you want to see her face when she knows that Slews has been all a fluke? Come on, Gert, I'll wake up the kid if I try to dump him in alone."

"Well, for just a minute. I—I don't want to butt in on your and—and her fun."

They entered with the stealthy espionage of thieves, and in the narrow hallway she waited while he tiptoed to the bedroom and back again, his lips pursed outward in a "'Sh-h-h."

"She must be in the front room. The kid's in his crib. Come on, Gert. 'Sh-h-h!"

He was pink-faced and full of caution, raising each foot in exaggerated stealth. Between them they manoeuvered the carriage down the hallway.

"'Sh-h-h. If she's awake, she can hear every word in the front room."

From her wakeful couch Madam Moores raised herself on her elbow, cupping her ear in her palm, and straining her glance down the long hallway. The tears had dried on her cheeks.

"Here, Gert, you dump in these things and let me lift the kid."

"No, no; let me! Go 'way, Phonzie. You'll wake him! I just want her to be too surprised to open her mouth when she sees him sleeping in it like a top."

She threw back the net drapery and leaned to the heart of the crib, and the blood ran in a flash across her face.

"Little darling—little Phonzie darling!"

"Don't wake him, Gert."

She was reluctant to withdraw herself. "His little darling fists, so pink and curled up! Little Phonzie darling!"

He hung over each process, proud and awkward.

"Little darling—little darling—here, Phonzie help."

They transferred the burden, the child not moving on his pillow. In the shallow heart of the perambulator, the high froth of pillows about him, he lay like a bud, his soft profile against the lace, and his skin like the innermost petal of a rose.

"Phonzie, ain't he—ain't he the softest little darling! Gawd! how—how she'll love to—to be wheeling him!"

His fingers fumbled with excitement and fell to strapping and buckling with a great show and a great ineffectually.

"Here, help me let down the glass top."

"'Sh-h-h-h! Every word carries in this flat."

"Now!"

"Now!"

"You wheel him down and in on her, Gert."

She stiffened with a new diffidence. "No, no. It's your surprise."

"You done all the work on the job as much as me, and it's half your present, anyways. You roll him down the hall and stand next to her till she wakes up. She's a tight little sleeper, but if she don't wake soon I'll drop a book or something. Go on, Gert, roll it in."

"No, no, Phonzie. You and her have your fun out alone. It's your fun, anyways, not mine. This piece of rolling-stock will roll herself along home now."

"Aw, now—"

"Anyways, I'm dead. Look what a rag I am! Look at the hem of this skirt! The next time I do a crazy thing like walk from Brooklyn, I want to be burned in oil."

"Now, Gert, stick around and I'll send you home in a cab."

But she was out and past him craning her neck backward through the aperture of the open door. "Go to it, Phonzie! It's your fun, anyways. Yours and hers. S'long!"

He had already begun his triumphant passage down the hallway, and on her couch among her pillows Madam Moores closed her eyes in a simulation of sleep and against the tears that scalded her lids.

In a south-bound car Gertie Dobriner found a seat well toward the front. Across the aisle a day laborer on a night debauch threw her a watery stare and a thick-tongued, thick-brogued remark. A char-woman with a newspaper bundle hugged under one arm dozed in the seat alongside, her head lolling from shoulder to shoulder. Raindrops had long since dried on the window-pane. Gertie Dobriner cupped her chin in her palm and gazed out at the quiet street and the shuttered shops hurtling past.

Twice the conductor touched her shoulder, his hand outstretched for fare. She sprang about, fumbling in her purse for a coin, but with difficulty, because through the hot blur of her tears she could only grope ineffectually. When she finally found a five-cent piece, a tear had wiggle-waggled down her cheek and fell, splotching the back of her glove.

Across the aisle the day laborer leaned to her batting at the hen pheasant's tail in her hat, and a cold, alcoholic tear dripping from the corner of his own eye.

"Cheer up, my gir-rl," he said, through a beard like old moss—"cheer up and be a spor-r-rt!"



HOCHENHEIMER OF CINCINNATI

When Mound City began to experience the growing-pains of a Million Club, a Louisiana Exposition, and a block-long Public Library, she spread Westward Ho!—like a giant stretching and flinging out his great legs.

When rooming-houses and shoe-factories began to shove and push into richly curtained brown-stone-front Pine Street, reluctant papas, with urgent wives and still more urgent daughters, sold at a loss and bought white-stone fronts in restricted West End districts.

Subdivisions sprang up overnight. Two-story, two-doored flat-buildings, whole ranks and files of them, with square patches of front porch cut in two by dividing railings, marched westward and skirted the restricted districts with the formality of an army flanking. Grand Avenue, once the city's limit, now girded its middle like a loin-cloth. The middle-aged inhabitant who could remember it when it was a corn-field now beheld full-blasted breweries, cinematograph theaters, ten-story office-buildings, old mansions converted into piano-salesrooms and millinery emporiums, business colleges, and more full-blasted breweries up and down its length.

At Cook Street, which runs into Grand Avenue like a small tributary, a pall of smoke descended thick as a veil; and every morning, from off her second-story window-sills, Mrs. Shongut swept tiny dancing balls of soot; and one day Miss Rena Shongut's neat rim of tenderly tended geraniums died of suffocation.

Shortly after, the Adolph Shongut Produce Company signed a heavy note and bought out the Mound City Fancy Sausage and Poultry Company at a low figure. The spring following, large "To Let" signs appeared in the second-story windows of the modest house on Cook Street. And, hard pressed by the approaching first payment of the note and the great iron voice of the Middle West Shoe Company, which backed up against the woodshed; goaded by the no-less-insistent voice of Mrs. Shongut, whose soot balls increased, and by Rena, who developed large pores; shamed by the scorn of a son who had the finger-nails and trousers creases of a bank clerk—Adolph Shongut joined the great pantechnicon procession Westward Ho! and moved to a flat out on Wasserman Avenue—a six-room-and-bath, sleeping-porch, hot-and-cold-water, built-in-plate-rack, steam-heat, hardwood-floor, decorated-to-suit-tenant flat neatly mounted behind a conservative incline of a front terrace, with a square patch of rear lawn that backed imminently into the white-stone garages of Kingston Place.

Friedrichstrasse, Rue de la Paix, Fifth Avenue, Piccadilly, Princess Street and Via Nazionale are the highways of the world. Trod in literature, asterisked in guide-books, and pictured on postal cards, their habits are celebrated. Who does not know that Fifth Avenue is the most rococo boulevard in the world, and that it drinks its afternoon tea from etched, thin-stemmed glasses? Who does not know that Rue de la Paix runs through more novels than any other paved thoroughfare, and that Piccadilly bobbies have wider chest expansion than the Swiss Guards?

Wasserman Avenue has no such renown; but it has its routine, like the history-hoary Via Nazionale, which daily closes its souvenir-shops to seek siesta from two until four, the hours when American tourists are rattling in sight-seeing automobiles along the Appian Way.

At half past seven, six mornings in the week, a well-breakfasted procession, morning papers protruding from sack-coat pockets and toothpicks assiduous, hastens down the well-scrubbed front steps of Wasserman Avenue and turns its face toward the sun and the two-blocks-distant street-car. At half past seven, six days in the week, the wives of Wasserman Avenue hold their wrappers close up about their throats and poke uncoifed heads out of doors to Godspeed their well-breakfasted spouses.

Wasserman Avenue flutters farewell handkerchiefs to its husbands until they turn the corner at Rindley's West End Meat and Vegetable Market. At eventide Wasserman Avenue greets its husbands with kisses, frankly delivered on its rows of front porches.

Do not smile. Gautier wrote about the consolation of the arts; but, after all, he has little enough to say of that cold moment when art leaves off and heart turns to heart.

Most of Wasserman Avenue had never read much of Gautier, but it knew the greater truth of the consolation of the hearth. When Mrs. Shongut waved farewell to her husband that greater truth lay mirrored in her eyes, which followed him until Rindley's West End Meat and Vegetable Market shunted him from view.

"Mamma, come in and close the screen door—you look a sight in that wrapper."

Mrs. Shongut withdrew herself from the aperture and turned to the sunshine-flooded, mahogany-and-green-velours sitting-room.

"You think that papa seems so well, Renie? At breakfast this morning he looked so bad underneath his eyes."

Rena yawned in her rocking-chair and rustled the morning paper. The horrific caprice of her pores had long since succumbed to the West End balm of Wasserman Avenue. No rajah's seventh daughter of a seventh daughter had cheeks more delicately golden—that fine tinge which is like the glory of sunlight.

"Now begin, mamma, to find something to worry about! For two months he hasn't had a heart spell."

Mrs. Shongut drew a thin-veined hand across her brow. Her narrow shoulders, which were never held straight, dropped even lower, as though from pressure.

"He don't say much, but I know he worries enough about that second payment coming due in July and only a month and a half off. I tell you I knew what I was talking about when I never wanted him to buy out the Mound City. I was the one who said we was doing better in little business."

"Now begin, mamma!"

"I told him he couldn't count on Izzy to stay down in the business with him. I told him Izzy wouldn't spoil his white hands by helping his papa in business."

"I suppose, mamma, you think Izzy should have stayed down with papa when he could get that job with Uncle Isadore."

"You know why your Uncle Isadore took Izzy? Because to a strange bookkeeper he has to pay more. Your Uncle Isadore is my own brother, Renie, but I tell you he 'ain't never acted like it."

"That's what I say. What have we got rich relatives with a banking-house for, if Izzy can't start there instead of in papa's little business?"

"Ya, ya! What your Uncle Isadore does for Izzy wait and see. For his own sister he never done nothing, and for his own sister's son he don't do nothing, neither. You seen for yourself, if it was not for Aunt Becky begging him nearly on her knees, how he would have treated us that time with the mortgage. Better, I say, Izzy should stay with his papa in business or get out West like he wants, and where he can't keep such fine white hands to gamble with."

Miss Shongut slanted deeper until her slim body was a direct hypotenuse to the chair. "Honest, mamma, it's a shame the way you look for trouble, and the way you and papa pick on that boy."

"Pick! When a boy gambles the roulette and the cards and the horses until—"

"When a boy likes cards and horses and roulette it isn't so nice, I know, mamma; but it don't need to mean he's a born gambler, does it? Boys have got to sow their wild oats."

"Ya, ya! Wild oats! A boy that gambles away his last cent when he knows just the least bit of excitement his father can't stand! Izzy knows how it goes against his father when he plays. Ya, ya! I don't need to look for trouble; I got it. Your papa, with his heart trouble, is enough by itself."

"Well, we're all careful, ain't we, mamma? Did I even holler the other night when I thought I heard a burglar in the dining-room?"

"Ya! How I worry about the things you should know." Mrs. Shongut flung wide the windows and pinned back the lace curtains, so that the spring air, cool as water, flowed in.

Her daughter sprang to her feet and drew her filmy wrapper closer about her. "Mamma, the Solingers don't need to look right in on us from their dining-room."

"Say, I 'ain't got no time to be stylish for the neighbors. On wash-day I got my housework to do. Honest, Renie, do you think, instead of laying round, it would hurt you to go back and make the beds awhile? Do you think a girl like you ought to got to be told, on wash-day and with Lizzie in the laundry, to help a little with the housework? Do you think, Renie, it's nice? I ask you."

"It's early yet, mamma; the housework will keep."

"Early yet, she says! On Monday, with my girl in the laundry and you with five shirtwaists in the wash, it's early, she says! Your mother ain't too lazy to start now, lemme tell you. Get them Kingston Place ideas out of your head, Renie. Remember we don't do nothing but look out on their fine white garages; remember business ain't so grand with your papa, neither."

"Now begin that, mamma! I know it all by heart."

"I ain't beginning nothing, Renie; but, believe me, it ain't so nice for a girl to have to be told everything. How that little Jeannie Lissman, next door, helps her mother already, it's a pleasure to see. I—"

"You've told me about her before, mamma."

Mrs. Shongut flung a sheet across the upright piano.

"Gimme the broom, mamma. I'll sweep."

"Sweep I never said you need to do. It's bad enough I got to spoil my hands. Go back and wake Izzy up and make the beds."

"Aw, mamma, let him sleep. He don't have to be down until nine."

"Nine o'clock nowadays young men have got to work! Up to five years ago every morning at dark your papa was down-town to see the poultry come in, and now at eight o'clock my son can't be woke up to go to work. Honest, I tell you times is changed!"

"Mamma, the way you pick on that boy!"

Mrs. Shongut folded both hands atop her broom in a solemn and hieratic gesture; her face was full of lines, as though time had autographed it many times over in a fine hand.

"Can you blame me? Can you blame me that I worry about that boy, with his wild ways? That a boy like him should gamble away every cent of his salary, except when he wins a little and buys us such nonsenses as bracelets! That a boy who learnt bookkeeping in an expensive business school, and knows that with his papa business ain't so good, shouldn't offer to pay out of his salary a little board! I tell you, Renie, as he goes now, it can't lead to no good; sometimes I would do almost anything to get him out West. Not a cent does he offer to—"

"He only makes—"

"You know, Renie, how little I want his money; but that he shouldn't offer to help out at home a little—that every cent on cards and clothes he should spend! I ask you, is it any reason him and his papa got scenes together until for the neighbors I'm ashamed, and for papa's heart so afraid? That a fine boy like our Izzy should run so wild!"

Tears lay close to the surface of her voice, and she created a sudden flurry of dust, sweeping with short, swift strokes.

"Izzy's not so worse! Give me a boy like Izzy any time, to a mollycoddle. He's just throwing off steam now."

"Just take up with your wild brother against your old parents! Your papa's a young man, with no heart trouble and lots of money; he can afford to have a card-playing son what has to have second breakfast alone every morning! Just you side with your brother!"

Miss Shongut side-stepped the furniture, which in the panicky confusion of sweeping was huddled toward the center of the room, and through a cloud of dust to the door.

"Every time I open my mouth in this family I put my foot in it. I should worry about what isn't my business!"

"Well, one thing I can say, me and papa never need to reproach ourselves that we 'ain't done the right thing by our children."

"Clean sheets, mamma?"

"Yes; and don't muss up the linen-shelfs."

Her daughter flitted down a narrow aisle of hallway; from the shoulders her thin, flowing sleeves floated backward, filmy, white.

Mrs. Shongut flung open the screen door and swept a pile of webby dust to the porch and then off on the patch of grass.

Thin spring sunshine lay warm along the neat terraces of Wasserman Avenue. Windows were flung wide to the fresh kiss of spring; pillows, comforters, and rugs draped across their sills. Across the street a negro, with an old gunny-sack tied apron-fashion about his loins, turned a garden hose on a stretch of asphalt and swept away the flood with his broom. A woman, whose hair caught the sunlight like copper, avoided the flood and tilted a perambulator on its two rear wheels down the wooden steps of her veranda.

Across the dividing rail of the Shonguts' porch a child with a strap of school-books flung over one shoulder ran down the soft terrace, and a woman emerged after her to the topmost step of the veranda, holding her checked apron up about her waist and shielding her eyes with one hand.

"Jeannie! Jean-nie!"

"Yes'm."

"Watch out for the street-car crossing, Jeannie."

"Yes'm."

"Jean-nie!"

"What?"

"Be sure!"

"Yeh."

"Good morning, Mrs. Shongut."

"Good morning, Mrs. Lissman. Looks like spring!"

"Ain't it so? I say to Mr. Lissman this morning, before he went down-town, that he should bring home some grass seed to-night."

"Ya, ya! Before you know it now, we got hot summer after such a late spring."

"I say to my Roscoe that after school to-day he should bring up the rubber-plant out of the cellar."

"That's right; use 'em while they're young, Mrs. Lissman. When they grow up it's different."

"Mrs. Shongut, you should talk! Only last night I says to my husband, I says, when I seen Miss Renie pass by, 'Such a pretty girl!' I tell you, Mrs. Shongut, such a pretty girl and such a fine-looking boy you can be proud of."

"Ach, Mrs. Lissman, you think so?"

"There ain't one on the street any prettier than Miss Renie. 'I tell you, if my Roscoe was ten years older she could have him,' I says to my husband."

Mrs. Shongut leaned forward on her broom-handle. "If I say so myself, Mrs. Lissman, I got good reasons to have pleasure out of my children. I guess you heard, Mrs. Lissman, what a grand position my Izzy has got with his uncle, of the Isadore Flexner Banking-house. Bookkeeping in a banking-house, Mrs. Lissman, for a boy like Izzy!"

"I tell you, Mrs. Shongut, if you got rich relations it's a help."

"How grand my brother has done for himself, Mrs. Lissman! Such a house he has built on Kingston Place! Such a home! You can see for yourself, Mrs. Lissman, how his wife and daughters drive up sometimes in their automobile."

"I'm surprised they don't come more often, Mrs. Shongut; your Renie and them girls, I guess, are grand friends."

"Ya; and to be in that banking-house is a grand start for my boy. I always say it can lead to almost anything. Only I tell him he shouldn't let fine company make him wild."

"Ach, boys will be boys, Mrs. Shongut. Even now it ain't so easy for me to get make my Roscoe to come in off his roller-skates at night. My Jeannie I can make mind; but I tell her when she is old enough to have beaus, then our troubles begin with her."

Mrs. Shongut's voice dropped into her throat in the guise of a whisper. "Some time, Mrs. Lissman, when my Renie ain't home, I want you should come over and I read you some of the letters that girl gets from young men. So mad she always gets at me if she knows I talk about them."

"Mrs. Shongut, you'll laugh when I tell you; but already in the school my Jeannie gets little notes what the little boys write to her. Mad it makes me like anything; but what can you do when you got a pretty girl?"

"A young man in Peoria, Mrs. Lissman, such beautiful letters he writes Renie, never in my life did I read. Such language, Mrs. Lissman; just like out of a song-book! Not a time my Renie goes out that I don't go right to her desk to read 'em—that's how beautiful he writes. In Green Springs she met him."

"Ain't it a pleasure, Mrs. Shongut, to have grand letters like that? Even with my little Jeannie, though it makes me so mad, still I—"

"But do you think my Renie will have any of them? 'Not,' she says, 'if they was lined in gold.'"

"I guess she got plenty beaus. Say, I ain't so blind that I don't see Sollie Spitz on your porch every—"

"Sollie Spitz! Ach, Mrs. Lissman, believe me, there's nothing to that! My Renie since a little child likes reading and writing like he does. I tell her papa we made a mistake not to keep her in school like she wanted."

"My Jeannie—"

"She loves learning, that girl. Under her pillow yesterday I found a book of verses about flowers. Where she gets such a mind, Mrs. Lissman, I don't know. But Sollie Spitz! Say, we don't want no poets in the family."

"I should say not! But I guess she gets all the good chances she wants."

"And more. A young man from Cincinnati—if I tell you his name, right away you know him—twice her papa brought him out to supper after they had business down-town together—only twice; and now every week he sends her five pounds—"

"Just think!"

"And such roses, Mrs. Lissman! You seen for yourself when I sent you one the other day. Right in his own hothouse he grows 'em, Mrs. Lissman."

"Just think!"

"If I tell you his name, Mrs. Lissman, right away you know his firm. In Cincinnati they say he's got the finest house up on the hill—musical chairs, that play when you sit on 'em. Twice every week he sends her—"

"Grand!"

"'I tell you,' I says to her papa, 'her cousins over in Kingston Place got tickets to take the young men to theaters with and automobiles to ride them round in; but, if I say so myself, not one of them has better chances than my Renie, right here in our little flat.'"

Mrs. Lissman folded her arms in a shelf across her bosom and leaned her ample uncorseted figure against the railing. "I give you right, Mrs. Shongut. Look at Jeannette Bamberger, over on Kingston; every night when me and Mr. Lissman used to walk past last summer, right on her grand front porch that girl sat alone, like she was glued."

"I know."

"Then look at Birdie Schimm, across the street. Her mother a poor widow who keeps a roomer, and look how her girl did for herself! Down at Rindley's this morning nothing was fine enough for that Birdie to buy for her table. I tell you, Mrs. Shongut, money ain't everything in this world."

"I always tell Renie she can take her place with the best of them."

"Washing?"

"An hour already my Lizzie has been down in the laundry."

"Half a day I take Addie to help with the ironing."

"You should watch her, Mrs. Lissman; she steals soap."

"They're all alike."

"Ah, the mailman. Always in my family no one gets letters but my Renie. Look, Mrs. Lissman! What did I tell you? Another one from Cincinnati. Renie! Renie!" Mrs. Shongut bustled indoors, leaving her broom indolent against the porch pillar. "Renie!"

"Yes, mamma."

"Letter!" Feet hurrying down the hall. "Letter from Cincinnati, Renie."

"Mamma, do you have to read the postmarks off my letters? I can read my own mail without any help."

"How she sasses her mother! Say, for my part, I should worry if you get letters or not. A girl that is afraid to give her mother a little pleasure!"

Mrs. Shongut made a great show of dragging the room's furniture back into place; unpinning the lace curtains and draping them carefully in their folds; drawing chairs across the carpet until the casters squealed; uncovering the piano. At the business of dusting the mantelpiece she lingered, stealing furtive glances through its mirror.

Miss Shongut ripped open the letter with a hairpin and curled her supple figure in a roomy curve of the divan. Her hair, unloosened, fell in a thick, black cascade down her back.

Mrs. Shongut redusted the mantel, raising each piece of bric-a-brac carefully; ran her cloth across the piano keys, giving out a discord; straightened the piano cover; repolished the mantelpiece mirror.

Her daughter read, blew the envelope open at its ripped end and inserted the letter. Her eyes, gray as dawn, met her mother's.

"Well, Renie, is—is he well?"

Silence.

"You're afraid, I guess, it gives me a little pleasure if I know what he has to say. A girl gets a letter from a man like Max Hochenheimer, of Cincinnati, and sits like a funeral!"

Rena unfolded herself from the divan and slid to her feet, slim as a sibyl.

"I knew it!"

"Knew what?"

"He's coming!"

"Coming? What?"

"He left Cincinnati last night and gets here this morning."

"This morning!"

"He comes on business, he says. And at five o'clock he stops in at the store and comes home to supper with papa."

"Supper—and a regular wash-day meal I got! Tongue sweet-sour, and red cabbage! Renie, get on your things and—"

"Honest, if it wasn't too late I would telegraph him I ain't home."

"Get on your things, Renie, and go right down to Rindley's for a roast. If you telephone they don't give you weight. This afternoon I go myself for the vegetables." Excitement purred in Mrs. Shongut's voice. "Hurry, Renie!"

"I'll get Izzy to take me out to supper and to a show."

"Get on your things, I say, Renie. I'll call Lizzie up-stairs too; we don't need no wash-day, with company for supper. Honest, excited like a chicken I get. Hurry, Renie!"

Miss Shongut stood quiescent, however, gazing through the lace curtains at the sun-lashed terrace, still soft from the ravages of winter and only faintly green. A flush spread to the tips of her delicate ears.

"Izzy's got to take me out to supper and a show. I won't stay home."

"Renie, you lost your mind? You! A young man like Max Hochenheimer begins to pay you attentions in earnest—a man that could have any girl in this town he snaps his finger for—a young man what your stuck-up cousins over on Kingston would grab at! You—you—Ach, to a man like Max Hochenheimer, of Cincinnati, she wants to say she ain't home yet!"

"Him! An old fatty like him! Izzy calls him Old Squash! Izzy says he's the only live Cartoon in captivity."

"Izzy—always Izzy! Believe me, your brother could do better than layin' in bed at eight o'clock in the morning, to copy after Max Hochenheimer."

"Always running down Izzy! Money ain't everything. I—I like other things in a man besides money—always money."

"Believe me, he has plenty besides money, has Max Hochenheimer. He 'ain't got no time maybe for silk socks and pressed pants, but for a fine good man your papa says he 'ain't got no equal. Your brother Izzy, I tell you, could do well to mock after Max Hochenheimer—a man what made hisself; a man what built up for hisself in Cincinnati a business in country sausages that is known all over the world."

"Country sausages!"

"No; he 'ain't got no time for rhymes like that long-haired Sollie Spitz, that ain't worth his house-room and sits until by the nightshirt I got to hold papa back from going out and telling him we 'ain't got no hotel! Max Hochenheimer is a man what's in a legitimate business."

"Please, mamma, keep quiet about him. I don't care if he—"

"I tell you the poultry and the sausage business maybe ain't up to your fine ideas; but believe me, the poultry business will keep you in shoes and stockings when in the poetry business you can go barefoot."

"All right, mamma; I won't argue."

"Your papa has had enough business with Max Hochenheimer to know what kind of a man he is and what kind of a firm. Such a grand man to deal with, papa says. Plain as a old shoe—just like he was a salesman instead of the president of his firm. A poor boy he started, and now such a house they say he built for his mother in Avondale on the hill! Squashy! I only wish for a month our Izzy had his income."

"I wouldn't marry him if—"

"Don't be so quick with yourself, missy. Just because he comes here on a day's business and then comes out to supper with papa don't mean so much."

"Don't it? Well, then, if you know more about what's in this letter than I do, I've got no more to say."

Mrs. Shongut sat down as though the power to stand had suddenly deserted her limbs. "What—what do you mean, Renie?"

"I'm not so dumb that I—I don't know what a fellow means by a letter like this."

"Renie!" The lines seemed to fade out of Mrs. Shongut's face, softening it. "Renie! My little Renie!"

"You don't need to my-little-Renie me, mamma; I—"

"Renie, I can't believe it—that such luck should come to us. A man like Max Hochenheimer, of Cincinnati, who can give her the greatest happiness, comes for our little girl—"

"I—"

"Always like me and papa had to struggle, Renie, in money matters you won't have to. I tell you, Renie, nothing makes a woman old so soon. Like a queen you can sit back in your automobile. Always a man what's good to his mother, like Max Hochenheimer, makes, too, a grand husband. I want, Renie, to see your Aunt Becky's and your cousins' faces at the reception. Renie—I—"

"Mamma, you talk like—Oh, you make me so mad."

"Musical chairs they got in the house, Renie, what, as soon as you sit on, begin to play. Mrs. Schwartz herself sat on one; and the harder you sit, she says, the louder it plays. Automobiles; a elevator for his mother! I—Ach, Renie, I—I feel like all our troubles are over. I— Ach, Renie, you should know how it feels to be a mother."

Tears rained frankly down Mrs. Shongut's face and she smiled through their mist, and her outstretched arms would tremble.

"Renie, come to mamma!"

Miss Shongut, quivering, drew herself beyond their reach. "Such talk! Honest, mamma, you—you make me ashamed, and mad like anything, too. I wouldn't marry a little old squashy fellow like him if he was worth the mint."

"Renie! Re-nie!"

"An old fellow, just because he's got money and—"

"Old! Max Hochenheimer ain't more than in his first thirties, and old she calls him! When a man makes hisself by hard work he 'ain't got time to keep young, with silk socks and creased pants, and hair-tonic what smells up my house a hour after Izzy's been gone. It ain't the color of a man's vest, Renie—it's the color of his heart, underneath it. When papa was a young man, do you think, if I had looked at the cigar ashes on his vest instead of at what was underneath, that I—"

"That talk's no use with me, mamma."

"Renie; you—you wouldn't do it—you wouldn't refuse him?"

Her reply leaped out suddenly, full of fire: "It's not me or my feelings you care anything about. Every one but me you think about first. What about me? What about me? I'm the one that's got to do the marrying and live with him. I'm the one you're trying to sell off like I was cattle. I'm the one! I'm the one!"

"Renie!"

"Yes; sell me off—sell me off—like cattle!"

Tears, blinding, scalding, searing, rushed down her cheeks, and her smooth bosom, where the wrapper fell away to reveal it, heaved with the storm beneath.

"But you can't sell me—you can't! You can't keep nagging to get me married off. I can get out, but I won't be married out! If I wasn't afraid of papa, with his heart, I'd tell him so, too. I'd tell him so now. I won't be married out—I won't be married out! I won't! I won't!"

Mrs. Shongut clasped her cheeks in the vise of her two hands. "Married out! She reproaches me yet—a mother that would go through fire for her children's happiness!"

"Always you're making me uncomfortable that I'm not married yet—not papa or Izzy, but you—you! Never does one of the girls get engaged that you don't look at me like I was wearing the welcome off the door-mat."

"Listen to my own child talk to me! No wonder you cry so hard, Renie Shongut, to talk to your mother like that—a girl that I've indulged like you. To sass her mother like that! A man like Max Hochenheimer comes along, a man where the goodness looks out of his face, a man what can give her every comfort; and, because he ain't a fine talker like that long-haired Sollie Spitz, she—"

"You leave him out! Anyways, he's got fine feeling for something besides—sausages."

"Is it a crime, Renie, that I should want so much your happiness? Your papa's getting a old man now, Renie; I won't always be here, neither."

"For the love of Mike, what's the row? Can't a fellow get any beauty sleep round this here shebang? What are you two cutting up about?"

The portieres parted to reveal Mr. Isadore Shongut, pressed, manicured, groomed, shaved—something young about him; something conceited; his magenta bow tied to a nicety, his plushlike hair brushed up and backward after the manner of fashion's latest caprice, and smoothing a smooth hand along his smooth jowl.

"Morning, ma. What's the row, Renie? Gee! it's a swell joint round here for a fellow with nerves! What's the row, kid?"

Mr. Isadore Shongut made a cigarette and puffed it, curled himself in a deep-seated chair, with his head low and his legs flung high. His sister lay on the divan, with her tearful profile buried, basso-rilievo, against a green velours cushion, her arms limp and dangling in exhaustion.

"What's the row, Renie?"

"N-nothing."

"Aw, come out with it—what's the row? What you sitting there for, ma, like your luck had turned on you?"

"Ask—ask your sister, Izzy; she can tell you."

"'Smater, sis?"

"N-nothing—only—only—old—old Hochenheimer's coming to—to supper to-night, Izzy; and—"

"Old Squash! Oh, Whillikens!"

"Take me out, Izzy! Take me out anywhere—to a show or supper, or—or anywhere; but take me out, Izzy. Take me out before he comes."

"Sure I will! Old Squash! Whillikens!"

* * * * *

At five o'clock Wasserman Avenue emerged in dainty dimity and silk sewing-bags. Rocking-chairs, tiptilted against veranda railings, were swung round front-face. Greetings, light as rubber balls, bounded from porch to porch. Fine needles flashed through dainty fabrics stretched like drum parchment across embroidery hoops; young children, shrilling and shouting in the heat of play, darted beneath maternal eyes; long-legged girls in knee-high skirts strolled up and down the sidewalks, arms intertwined.

At five-thirty the sun had got so low that it found out Mrs. Schimm in a shady corner of her porch, dazzled her eyes, and flashed teasingly on her needle, so that she crammed her dainty fabric in her sewing-bag and crossed the paved street.

"You don't mind, Mrs. Lissman, if I come over on your porch for a while, where it's shady?"

"It's a pleasure, Mrs. Schimm. Come right up and have a rocker."

"Just a few minutes I can stay."

"That's a beautiful stitch, Mrs. Schimm. When I finish this centerpiece I start me a dozen doilies too."

"I can learn it to you in five minutes, Mrs. Lissman. All my Birdie's trousseau napkins I did with this Battenberg stitch."

"Grand!"

"For a poor widow's daughter, Mrs. Lissman, that girl had a trousseau she don't need to be ashamed of."

"Look, will you? Mrs. Shapiro's coming down her front steps all diked out in a summer silk. I guess she goes down to have supper with her husband, since he keeps open evenings."

"I don't want to say nothing; but I don't think it's so nice—do you, Mrs. Lissman?—the first month what her mourning for her mother is up a yellow bird of paradise as big as a fan she has to have on her hat."

"Ain't it so!"

"I wish you could see the bird of paradise my Birdie bought when her and Simon was in Kansas City on their wedding-trip—you can believe me or not, a yard long! How that man spends money on that girl, Mrs. Lissman!"

"Say, when you got it to spend I always say it's right. He's in a good business and makes good money."

"You should know how good."

"The rainy days come to them that save up for them, like us old-fashioned ones, Mrs. Schimm."

"I—Look, will you? Ain't that Izzy Shongut crossing the street? He comes home from work this early! I tell you, Mrs. Lissman, I don't want to say nothing; but I hear things ain't so good with the Shonguts."

"So!"

"Yes; I hear, since the old man bought out that sausage concern, they got their troubles."

"And such a nice woman! That's what she needs yet on top of his heart trouble and her girl running round with Sollie Spitz; and, from what she don't say, I can see that boy causes her enough worry with his wild ways. That's what that poor woman needs yet!"

"Look at Izzy, Mrs. Lissman. I bet that boy drinks or something. Look at his face—like a sheet! I tell you that boy ain't walking up this street straight. Look for yourself, Mrs. Lissman. Ach, his poor mother!" A current like electricity that sets a wire humming ran in waves along Mrs. Schimm's voice. "Look!"

"Oh-oh! I say, ain't that a trouble for that poor woman? When you see other people's trouble your own ain't so bad."

"Ain't that awful? Just look at his face! Ain't that a trouble for you?"

"She herself as much as told me not a thing does her swell brother over on Kingston do for them. I guess such a job as that boy has got in his banking-house he could get from a stranger too."

"'Sh-h-h, Mrs. Lissman! Here he comes. Don't let on like we been talking about him. Speak to him like always."

"Good evening, Izzy."

Isadora Shongut paused in the act of mounting the front steps and turned a blood-driven face toward his neighbor. His under jaw sagged and trembled, and his well-knit body seemed to have lost its power to stand erect, so that his clothes bagged.

"Good evening, Mrs.—Lissman."

"You're home early to-night, Izzy?"

"Y-yes."

He fitted his key into the front-door lock, but his hand trembled so that it would not turn; and for a racking moment he stood there vainly pushing a weak knee against the panel, and his breath came out of his throat in a wheeze.

The maid-of-all-work, straggly and down at the heels, answered his fumbling at the lock and opened the door to him.

"You, Mr. Izzy!"

He sprang in like a catamount, clicking the door quick as a flash behind him. "'Sh-h-h! Where's ma?"

"Your mamma ain't home; she went up to Rindley's. You ain't sick, are you, Mr. Izzy?"

A spasm of relief flashed over his face, and he snapped his dry fingers in an agony of nervousness. "Where's Renie? Quick!"

"She's in her room, layin' down. She ain't goin' to be home to the supper-party to-night, Mr. Izzy; she—What's the matter, Mr. Izzy?"

He was down the hallway in three running bounds and, without the preliminary of knocking, into his sister's tiny, semi-darkened bedroom, his breathing suddenly filling it. She sprang from her little chintz-covered bed, where she had flung herself across its top, her face and wrapper rumpled with sleep.

"Izzy!"

"'Sh-h-h!"

"Izzy, what—where—Izzy, what is it?"

"'Sh-h-h, for God's sake! 'Sh-h! Don't let 'em hear, Renie. Don't let 'em hear!"

Her swimming senses suddenly seemed to clear. "What's happened, Izzy? Quick! What's wrong?"

He clicked the key in the lock, and in the agony of the same dry-fingered nervousness rubbed his hand back and forth across his dry lips. "Don't let 'em hear—the old man or ma—don't!"

"Quick! What is it, Izzy?" She sat down on the edge of the bed, weak. "Tell me, Izzy; something terrible is wrong. It—it isn't papa, Izzy? Tell me it isn't papa. For God's sake, Izzy, he—he ain't—"

"'Sh-h-h! N-no! No, it ain't. It—it ain't pa. It's me, Renie—it's me!" He crumbled at her feet, his palms plastered over his eyes and his fingers clutched deep in the high nap of his hair. "It's me! It's me!"

"What? What?"

"'Sh-h-h! For God's sake, Renie, you got to stand by me; you got to stand by me this time if you ever did! Promise me, Renie! It's me, Renie. I—Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"

She stooped to his side, her voice and hands trembling beyond control. "Izzy! Izzy, tell me—tell me! What is it?"

"Oh, my God, why didn't I die? Why didn't I die?"

"Izzy, what—what is it? Money? Haven't I always stood by you before? Won't I now? Tell me, Izzy. Tell me, I say!"

She tugged at his hands, prying them away from his eyes; but the terror she saw there set her trembling again and thrice she opened her lips before she found voice.

"Izzy, if you don't tell me, mamma will be back soon, and then pa; and—you better tell me quick. Your own sister will stand by you. Get up, dearie." Tears trickled through his fingers and she could see the curve of his back rise and fall to the retching of suppressed sobs. "Izzy, you got to tell me quick—do you hear?"

He raised his ravaged face at the sharp-edged incisiveness in her voice. "I'm in trouble, Renie—such trouble. Oh, my God, such horrible trouble!"

"Tell me quick—do you hear? Quick, or mamma and papa—"

"Renie—'sh-h-h! They mustn't know—the old man mustn't; she mustn't, if—if I got to kill myself first. His heart—he—he mustn't, Renie—he mustn't know."

"Know what?"

"It's all up, Renie. I've done something—the worst thing I ever done in my life; but I didn't know while I was doing it, Renie, how—what it was. I swear I didn't! It was like borrowing, I thought. I was sure I could pay it back. I thought the system was a great one and—and I couldn't lose."

"Izzy—roulette again! You—you been losing at—at roulette again?"

"No, no; but they found out at—at the bank, Renie. I—oh, my God! Nothing won't save me!"

"The bank, Izzy?"

"They found out, Renie. Yesterday, when the bank was closed, he—Uncle Isadore—put 'em on the books. Nothing won't save me now, Renie. He won't; you—you know him—hard as nails! Nothing won't save me. It's going to be stripes for me, Renie. Ma—the old man—stripes! I—I can't let 'em do it. I—I'll kill myself first. I can't let 'em—I—can't—I can't let 'em!"

He burrowed his head in her lap to stifle his voice, which slipped up and away from his control; and her icy hands and knees could feel his entire body trembling.

"'Sh-h-h, dearie! Try to tell me slow, dearie, for pa's and ma's sake, so—so we can fix it up somehow."

"We can't fix it up. The old man 'ain't got the money and—and he can't stand it."

"For God's sake, Izzy, tell me or I'll go mad! Slow, dearie, so Renie can think and listen and help you. She's with you, darling, and nothing can hurt you. Now begin, Izzy, and go slow. What did you start to tell me about Uncle Isadore and the books? Slow, darling."

Her voice was smooth and flowing, and the hand that stroked his hair was slow and soothing; the great stream of his passion abated and he huddled quietly at her feet.

"Now begin, dearie. Uncle Isadore—what?"

"This morning, when I got down to—to the office, two men had—my books."

"Yes."

"O God! When I seen 'em, right away my heart just stopped."

'"Sh-h-h! Yes—two men had the books."

"And Uncle Isadore—Uncle Isadore—he was—he—"

"Go on!"

"He—he was in the cage, too; and—and you know how he looks when his eyes get little."

"Yes, yes, Izzy."

"They were—expert accountants with him. All day yesterday, Sunday, they were on my books; and—and they had me, Renie—they had me like a rat in a trap."

"Had you, Izzy?"

He drew himself upward, clutching at her arms; and the sobs began to tear him afresh. "They had me, Renie."

"Oh, Izzy, why—"

"I could have paid it back. I could have put it back if the old skinflint hadn't got to sniffing round and sicked 'em on my books. I could have won it all back in time, Renie. With my own uncle, my own mother's brother, it—it wasn't like I was stealing it, was it, Renie? Was it?"

"Oh, my God, Izzy!"

"It wasn't, Renie—my own uncle! I could have won it back if—if—"

"Won back what, Izzy—won back what?"

"I—I started with a hundred, Renie. I had to have it; I had to, I tell you. You remember that night I—I wanted you to go over and ask Aunt Beck for it? I had to have it. Pa—. I—I couldn't excite him any more about it; and—and I had to have it, I tell you, Renie."

"Yes; then what?"

"And I—I borrowed it without asking. I—I fixed it on my books so—so Uncle Isadore wouldn't—couldn't—. I—I fixed it on my books."

"Oh-oh, Izzy! Oh—oh—oh!"

"I was trying out a system—a new one—and it worked, Renie. I tried it out on the new wheel down at Sharkey's and the seventeen system worked like a trick. I won big the first and second nights, Renie—you remember the night I brought you and ma the bracelets? I paid back the hundred the first week, Renie; and no one knew—no one knew."

"Oh-h-h-h!"

"The next Friday my luck turned on me—I never ought to have played on Friday—turned like a toad one unlucky Friday night. I got in deep before I knew it, and deeper and deeper; and then—and then it just seemed there wasn't no holding me, Renie. I got wild—got wild, I tell you; and I—I wrote 'em checks I didn't have no right to write. I—I went crazy, I tell you. Next day—you remember that morning I left the house so early?—I had to fix it with the books and borrow what—what I needed before the banks opened. I—I had to make good on them checks, Renie. I fixed it with the books, and from that time on it worked."

"Oh, Izzy—Izzy—Izzy!"

"I kept losing, Renie; but I knew, if my luck just changed from that unlucky Friday night, I could pay it back like the first time. All I needed was a little time and a little luck and I could pay it back like the first hundred; so I kept fixing my books, Renie, and—and borrowing more—and more."

"How much?"

"O God, Renie! I could have paid it back with time; I—"

"'Sh-h-h! How much, Izzy—how much?"

"Somebody must have snitched on me, how I was losing every night. The old skinflint, he—Oh, my God! They got me, Renie—they got me; and it'll kill the old man!"

"How much, Izzy—how much?"

"Oh, my God! I could have paid it back if—if—"

"How much? Tell me, I say!"

"Four—thousand!"

"Oh-h-h, Izzy—Izzy—Izzy!" She sprang back from him, blind with scalding tears. "Izzy! Four thousand! Oh, my God! Four thousand!"

"I could have paid it back, Renie; the system was all right, but—"

"Four thousand! Four thousand!"

"He—he was all for detaining me right away, Renie; sending for pa, and—and sicking the law right on his—his own sister's son. On my knees for three hours I had to beg, Renie—on my knees, for ma's sake and your sake and pa's—just for a little time I begged. A little time was all I begged. He don't care nothing for blood. I—I had to beg him, Renie, till—till I fainted."

"What shall we do, Izzy? What shall we do?"

"I squeezed two weeks' time out of him, Renie. Two weeks to pay it back or he puts the law on me—two weeks; and I got it from him like blood from a turnip. Oh, my God, Renie, four thousand in two weeks—four thousand in two weeks!"

He fell in a half-swoon against her skirts. Out of her arms she made a pillow of mercy and drew his head down to her bosom; and tears, bitter with salt, mingled with his, and her heart's blood buzzed in her brain.

"Izzy, Izzy! What have you done?"

"I can't pay it back, Renie. Where could I get half that much? I can't pay back four dollars, much less four thousand. I can't! I can't!"

"Four thousand!"

"We gotta keep it from the old man and ma, Renie. Let 'em kill me if they want to; but we gotta keep it from him and ma."

"Four thousand! Four thousand!"

In the half-light of the room, with the late sunshine pressing warm against the drawn green shades, the remote shouts of children coming to them through the quiet, and the whir of a lawn-mower off somewhere, they crouched, these two, as though they would shut their ears to the flapping of vultures' wings.

"They can't do anything to you, Izzy."

"What'll we do, Renie? What'll we do?"

"We got to find a way, Izzy."

"They can't send me up for it, Renie—say they can't!"

"No—no, dearie."

"I ain't crooked like that! It was my own uncle. They can't send me up, Renie. I'll kill myself first! I'll kill myself first!"

"Izzy, ain't you ashamed?" But it was as though the odor of death found its way to her nostrils, nauseating her. "Let me think. Let me think just a minute. Let me think." She rammed the ends of her fists tight against her eyes until Catherine wheels spun and spun against her lids. "Let me think just a minute."

"There's nobody, Renie—nobody—nobody—no way."

"Four—thousand!"

"No-body, I tell you, Renie. But I'll kill myself before I—"

Renie stood up. "Izzy! I will!"

He was whimpering frankly against her skirt. After a while she raised her face. Jeanne d'Arc might have looked like that when she beheld the vision.

"Squash!"

"What?"

"Squash! It's like he was sent out of heaven!"

"He—he ain't—"

"He's coming to-night—to ask me, Izzy. You know what I mean? Don't you see? Don't you see?"

"I—"

"Don't you see, Izzy? He's going to ask me, and—and I'm going to do it!"

"Oh, my God! Renie, you can't do that for me if—You can't do that for me."

"He's got it, Izzy. I can get ten thousand out of him if I got to."

"But, Renie—"

"I—I can rush it through and—do it before two weeks, Izzy; and we got a way out, Izzy—we got a way. We got a way!"

She threw herself in a passion of hysteria face downward on the bed and a tornado of weeping swept over her. Rooted, he stood as though face to face with an immense dawn, but with eyes that dared not see the light.

"Renie, I—can't! I—Renie, I can't let you do that for me if—if—I can't let you marry him for me if you don't—"

"'Sh-h-h!"

Mrs. Shongut's voice outside the door, querulous: "Renie!"

Silence.

"Re-nie!"

"Yes, mamma."

"Why you got your door locked?"

Silence.

"Huh?"

"I—I—"

"Come right away out in the dining-room. If you 'ain't got no more regards for your parents than not to stay home for supper, anyways you got to fix for the table the flowers what I brought home from market."

"Yes, mamma." She darted to her feet, drying the tears on her cheeks with the palm of her hand. "Coming, mamma." And she slipped through the door of her room, scarcely opening it.

In the dining-room, beside the white-spread table, Mrs. Shongut unwound a paper toot of pink carnations; but the flavor of her spirit was bitter and her thin, pressed-looking lips hung at the corners.

"Maybe you can stop pouting long enough to help with things a little, even if you won't be here. I tell you it's a pleasure when papa comes home for supper with company, to have children like mine."

"Listen, mamma. I—"

"Sounds like somebody's going out of the house, Renie. Who—"

"No, no. No one has been here, mamma. It's just the breeze."

"I tell you it's a pleasure to have a daughter like mine! What excuses to make to Max Hochenheimer, a young man what comes all the way from Cincinnati to see her—"

"Listen, mamma; I—I've only been fooling—honest, I have."

"What?"

"I—aw, mamma."

Miss Shongut's face was suddenly buried in the neat lace yoke of her mother's dimity blouse, and her arms crept up about her neck.

"I've been only fooling about to-night, mamma. Don't you think I know it is just like he was sent from heaven? I've only been fooling, mamma, so that—so that you shouldn't know how happy I am."

The soul peeped out suddenly in Mrs. Shongut's face, hallowing it. "Renie! My little Renie!"

* * * * *

On Wasserman Avenue the hand that rocks the cradle oftener than not carves the roast. Behind her platter, sovereign of all she surveyed, and skilfully, so that beneath her steel the red, oozing slices curled and fell into their pool of gravy, reigned Mrs. Shongut. And her suzerainty rested on her as lightly as a tiara of seven stars.

"Mr. Hochenheimer, you ain't eating a thing!" Mrs. Shongut craned her neck round the centerpiece of pink carnations. "Not a thing on your plate! Renie, pass Mr. Hochenheimer some more salad."

"No, no, Mrs. Shongut; just don't you worry about me."

"I hope you ain't bashful, Mr. Hochenheimer. We feel toward you just like home folks."

"Indeed, what I don't see I ask for, Mrs. Shongut."

"Renie, pass Mr. Hochenheimer some more of that red cabbage."

"No, no—please, Mrs. Shongut; I got plenty."

"Ach, Mr. Hochenheimer, you eat so little you must be in love."

"Mamma!"

"Ach, Mr. Hochenheimer knows that I only fool. Renie, pass the dumplings."

"No, no—please! I—"

"Mamma, don't force. You're not bashful, are you, Mr. Hochenheimer?"

Miss Shongut inclined her head with a saucy, birdlike motion, and showed him the full gleaming line of her teeth. He took a large mouthful of ice-water to wash down the red of confusion that suddenly swam high in his face, tingeing even his ears.

"For more dumplings I ain't bashful, Miss Renie; but there—there's other things—I am bashful to ask for."

From his place at the far end of the table Mr. Shongut laughed deep, as though a spiral spring was vibrating in the recesses of his throat.

"Bashful with the girls—eh, Hochenheimer?"

"I ain't much of a lady's man, Shongut."

"Well, I wish you was just so bashful in business—believe me! I wish you was."

"Shongut, I never got the best of you yet in a deal."

"With my girl he's bashful yet, mamma; but down to the last sausage-casing I have to pay his fancy prices. Nun, look mamma, how red she gets! What you get so red for, Renie—eh?"

"Aw, papa!"

"A little teasing from her old father she can't take. Look at her, mamma! Look at both of them—red like beets. Neither of them can stand a little teasing from an old man."

"Adolph, you mustn't! All people don't like it when you make fun. Mr. Hochenheimer, you must excuse my husband; a great one he is to tease and make his little fun."

Mr. Shongut's ancient-looking face, covered with a short, grizzled growth of beard and pale as a prophet's beneath, broke into a smile, and a minute network of lines sprang out from the corners of his eyes.

"I was bashful in my life once, too—eh, mamma?"

"Papa!"

"Please, you must excuse my husband, Mr. Hochenheimer; he likes to have his little jokes."

Mr. Hochenheimer pushed away his plate in high embarrassment; nor would his eyes meet Miss Shongut's, except to flash away under cover of exaggerated imperturbability.

"My husband's a great one to tease, Mr. Hochenheimer. My Izzy too, takes after him. I'm sorry that boy ain't home, so you could meet him again. We call him the dude of the family. Renie, pass Mr. Hochenheimer the toothpicks."

A pair of deep-lined brackets sprang out round Mr. Shongut's mouth. "Why ain't that boy home for supper, where he belongs?"

"Ach, now, Adolph, don't get excited right away. Always, Mr. Hochenheimer, my husband gets excited over nothing, when he knows how it hurts his heart. Like that boy ain't old enough to stay out to supper when he wants, Adolph! 'Sh-h-h!"

Mrs. Shongut smiled to conceal that her heart was faint, and the saga of a mother might have been written round that smile.

"Now, now, Adolph, don't you begin to worry."

"I tell you, Shongut, it's a mistake to worry. I save all my excitement for the good things in life."

"See, Adolph; from a young man like Mr. Hochenheimer you can get pointers."

"I tell you, Shongut, over such a nice little home and such a nice little family as you got I might get excited; but over the little things that don't count for much I 'ain't got time."

Mrs. Shongut waved a deprecatory hand. "It's a nice enough little home for us, Mr. Hochenheimer, but with a grand house like I hear you built for your mother up on the stylish hilltop in Cincinnati, I guess to you it seems right plain."

"That's where you're wrong, Mrs. Shongut. Like I says to Shongut coming out on the street-car with him to-night, if it hadn't been that I thought maybe my mother would like a little fanciness after a hard life like hers, for my own part a little house and a big garden is all I ask for."

"Ach, Mr. Hochenheimer, with such a grand house like that is—sunk-in baths Mrs. Schwartz says you got! To see a house like that, I tell you it must be a treat."

"It's a fine place, Mrs. Shongut, but too big for me and my mother. When I got into the hands of architects, let me tell you, I feel I was lucky to get off with only twenty-five rooms. Right now, Mrs. Shongut, we got rooms we don't know how to pronounce."

"Twenty-five rooms! Did you hear that, Adolph? Twenty-five rooms! I bet, Mr. Hochenheimer, your mother is proud of such a son as can give her twenty-five rooms."

"We don't say much about it to each other, my mother and me; but—you can believe me or not—in our big, stylish house up there on the hill, with her servants to take away from her all the pleasure of work and her market and old friends down on Richmond Street yet, and nothing but gold furniture round her, she gets lonesome enough. If it wasn't for my garden and the beautiful scenery from my terraces, I would wish myself back in our little down-town house more than once, too. I tell you, Mrs. Shongut, fineness ain't everything."

"You should bring your mother some time to Mound City with you when you come over on business, Mr. Hochenheimer. We would do our best to make it pleasant for her."

"She's an old woman, Mrs. Shongut, and in a train or an automobile I can't get her. I guess it would be better, Mrs. Shongut, if I carry off some of your family with me to Cincinnati."

And, to belie that his words had any glittering import, he lay back in his chair in a state of silent laughter, which set his soft-fleshed cheeks aquiver; and his blue eyes, so ready yet so reluctant, disappeared behind a tight squint.

"Adolph, I guess Mr. Hochenheimer will excuse us—eh? Renie, you can entertain Mr. Hochenheimer while me and papa go and spend the evening over at Aunt Meena's. Mr. Shongut's sister, Mr. Hochenheimer, 'ain't been so well. Anyways, I always say young folks 'ain't got no time for old ones."

"You go right ahead along, Mrs. Shongut. Don't treat me like company. I hope Miss Renie don't mind if I spend the evening?"

"I should say not."

"Hochenheimer, a cigar?"

"Thanks; I don't smoke."

"My husband, with his heart trouble, shouldn't smoke, neither, Mr. Hochenheimer; it worries me enough. What me and the doctors tell him goes in one ear and out of the other."

"See, Hochenheimer, when you get a wife how henpecked you get!"

"A henpeck never drew much blood, Shongut."

"Come, Adolph; it is a long car-ride to Meena's."

They pushed back from the table, the four of them, smiling-lipped. With his short-fingered, hairy-backed hands Mr. Hochenheimer dusted at his coat lapels, then shook his bulging trousers knees into place.

The lamp of inner sanctity burns in strange temples. A carpenter in haircloth shirt first turned men's hearts outward. Who can know, who does not first cross the plain of the guide with gold, that behind the moldy panels at Ara Coeli reigns the jeweled bambino, robed in the glittering gems of sacrifice?

Who could know, as Mr. Hochenheimer stood there in the curtailed dignity of his five feet five, that behind his speckled and slightly rotund waistcoat a choir sang of love, and that the white flame of his spirit burned high?

"I tell you, Mrs. Shongut, it is a pleasure to be invited out to your house. You should know how this old bachelor hates hotels."

"And you should know how welcome you always are, Mr. Hochenheimer. To-morrow night you take supper with us too. We don't take 'no'—eh, Adolph? Renie?"

"I appreciate that, Mrs. Shongut; but I—I don't know yet—if—if I stay over."

Mr. Shongut batted a playful hand and shuffled toward the door. "You stay, Hochenheimer! I bet you a good cigar you stay. Ain't I right, Renie, that he stays? Ain't I right?"

Against the sideboard, fingering her white dress, Miss Shongut regarded her parents, and her smile was as wan as moonlight.

"Ain't I right, Renie?"

"Yes, papa."

* * * * *

On the bit of porch, the hall light carefully lowered and cushions from within spread at their feet, the dreamy quiet of evening and air as soft as milk flowed round and closed in about Miss Shongut and Mr. Hochenheimer.

They drew their rocking-chairs arm to arm, so that, behind a bit of climbing moonflower vine, they were as snug as in a bower. Stars shone over the roofs of the houses opposite; the shouts of children had died down; crickets whirred.

"Is the light from that street lamp in your eyes, Renie?"

"No, no."

The wooden floor reverberated as they rocked. A little thrill of breeze fluttered her filmy shoulder scarf against his hand. To his fermenting fancy it was as though her spirit had flitted out of the flesh.

"Ah, Miss Renie, I—I—"

"What, Mr. Hochenheimer?"

"Nothing. Your—your little shawl, it tickled my hand so."

She leaned her elbow on the arm of her chair and cupped her chin in her palm. Her eyes had a peculiar value—like a mill-pond, when the wheel is still, reflects the stars in calm and unchurned quiet.

"You look just like a little princess to-night, Miss Renie—that pretty shawl and your eyes so bright."

"A princess!"

"Yes; if I had a tin suit and a sword to match I'd ride up on a horse and carry you off to my castle in Cincinnati."

"Say, wouldn't it be a treat for Wasserman Avenue to see me go loping off like that!"

"This is the first little visit we've ever had together all by ourselves, ain't it, Miss Renie? Seems like, to a bashful fellow like me, you was always slipping away from me."

"The flowers and the candies you kept sending me were grand, Mr. Hochenheimer—and the letter—to-day."

"You read the letter, Miss Renie?"

"Yes, I—I—You shouldn't keep spoiling me with such grand flowers and candy, Mr. Hochenheimer."

"If tell you that never in my life I sent flowers or candy, or wrote a letter like I wrote you yesterday, to another young lady, I guess you laugh at me—not, Miss Renie?"

"You shouldn't begin, Mr. Hochenheimer, by spoiling me."

"Ah, Miss Renie, if you knew how I like to spoil you, if you would let me—Ach, what's the use? I—I can't say it like I want." She could hear him breathing. "It—it's a grand night, Miss Renie."