"There you go again! Always picking on Lester. If you want to know it, next to Norma Beautiful and Allan Hunt he's the biggest money-maker your old corporation has got."

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

"And he'll be passing them all in a year or two, you see if he don't—if—if—if only you'd stop picking on him and letting Uncle Sol crowd him out of the pictures and everybody in the company take advantage of him—he—he's grand—he—"

"He's a grand conceited fool. If not for the silly matinee women in the world he couldn't make salt."

"That shows all you know about him, papa! He's got big ideals, Lester has. He got plans up his sleeve for making over the moving-picture business from the silly films they show nowadays to—"

"Yes—to something where no one gets a look-in except Lester Spencer. They're looking for his kind to run the picture business!"

"Roody—Bleema—please! Just look at poor grandma! Mr. Feist, I must apologize."

"He's a nix, an empty-headed—"

"He is—is he? Well, then—well, then—since you force me to it—right here in front of Mr. Feist—Lester Spencer and I got engaged to-day! He's the only man in my life. We're going to be married right off, in time for me to sail for France with the company. He's going to talk to you when he gets back from Horseshoe Bend. We're engaged! That's how much I think of Lester Spencer. That's how much I know he's the finest man in the world. Now then! Now then!"

There was a note in Miss Pelz's voice that, in the ensuing silence, seemed actually to ring against the frail crystal. She was on her feet, head up, tears drying.

"Blee-Bleema!"

"Moms darling, aren't you happy? Isn't it wonderful—moms?"

"Roody! For God's sake, Bleema, you're choking your father to death! Roody, for God's sake, don't get so red! Williams—some water—quick! Roody!"

"I'm all right. All right, I tell you. She got me excited. Sit down, Bleema—sit down, I said."

"Pelz, if you don't mind, I think maybe I'd better be going."

"You stay right here, Feist. I want you to hear every word that I'm going to say. If my daughter has no shame, I haven't, either. Williams, call Mrs. Sopinsky's maid, and see that she gets to her room comfortable. Sit down, Bleema!"

"My God!—I can't believe my ears—Bleema and such a goy play-actor—"

"Please, Rosie!"

"A goy that—"

"Rosie, I said, 'Please!' Bleema, did you hear me? Sit down!"

Miss Pelz sat then, gingerly on the chair-edge, her young lips straight. "Well?"

Her father crunched into his stiff damask napkin, holding a fistful of it tense against bringing it down in a china-shivering bang. Then, with carefully spaced words, "If I didn't think, Bleema, that you are crazy for the moment, infatuated with—"

"I'm not infatuated!"

"Bleema, Bleema, don't talk to your father so ugly!"

"Well, I guess I know my own mind. I guess I know when I'm in love with the finest, darlingest fellow that ever—"

"You hush that, Bleema! Hush that, while I can hold myself in. That I should live to hear my child make herself common over a loafer—"

"Papa, if you call him another name, I—I—"

"You'll sit right here and hear me out. If you think you're going to let this loafer ruin your own life and the lives of your parents and poor grandmother—"

"Papa, papa, you don't know him! The company are all down on him because they're jealous. Lester Spencer comes from one of the finest old Southern families—"

"Roody, Roody, a goy play-actor—"

"'A goy play-actor'! I notice, mamma, you are the one always likes to brag when the girls and fellows like Norma Beautiful and Allan Hunt and Lester and—and all come up to the house. It's the biggest feather in your cap the way on account of papa the big names got to come running when you invite them."

"Your mother's little nonsenses have got nothing to do with it."

"She reproaches me with having brought about this goy mix-up! Me that has planned each hour of that girl's life like each one was a flower in a garden, A young man, a grand young man like Mr. Feist, crazy in lo—"

"Mrs. Pelz, for God's sake! Mrs. Pelz, please!"

"Rosie, we'll leave Feist out of this."

"Lester Spencer, papa, is one of the finest characters, if only you—"

"I ask you again, Bleema, to cut out such talk while I got the strength left to hold in. It's a nail in my coffin I should live to talk such talk to my little daughter, but it's got to where I've got to say it. Lester Spencer and the fine character you talk about—it's free gossip in all the studios—is one of the biggest low-lifes in the picture-world. He has a reputation with the women that I'm ashamed to mention even before your mother, much less her daughter—"

"Oh, I know what you mean! Oh, you're like all the rest—down on him. You mean that silly talk about him and Norma Beautiful—"

"Oh my God, Roody, listen to her!"

"I can clear that up in a minute. He never cared a thing for her. It was just their always playing in the same pictures, and that silly matinee public, first thing he knew, got to linking their names together."

"Bleema—for God's sake—baby—what do you know about such?"

"Bleema, you're killing your mother! Your mother that used to rock you in your cradle while she stitched on the machine to buy you more comforts—a mother that—"

"Oh, if you're going to begin that!"

"Your poor old grandmother—don't she mean nothing? You saw how she looked just now when they took her out, even before she knows what it's all about—"

"I hope she never has a worse trouble than for me to marry the best—"

Then Mr. Pelz came down with crashing fist that shattered an opalescent wine-glass and sent a great stain sprawling over the cloth.

"By God, I'll kill him first! The dirty hou—"

"Pelz, for God's sake, control yourself!"

'I'll kill him, I tell you, Feist!"

"Roody!"

"You can't scare me that way, dad. I'm no baby to be hollered at like that. I love Lester Spencer, and I'm going to marry him!"

"I'll kill him; I'll—"

"Roody, Roody, for God's sake! 'Sh-h-h, the servants! Williams, close quick all the doors. Roody, for my sake, if not your child's! Mr. Feist, please—please make him, Mr. Feist!"

"Pelz, for God's sake, man, get yourself together! Excitement won't get you anywheres. Calm down. Be human."

Then Mr. Pelz sat down again, but trembling and swallowing back with difficulty. "She got me wild, Feist. You must excuse me. She got me wild —my little girl—my little flower—"

"Papa—dad darling! Don't you think it kills me, too, to see you like this? My own darling papa that's so terribly good. My own darling sweet mamma. Can't you see, darlings, a girl can't help it when—when—life just takes hold of her? I swear to you—I promise you that, when you come to know Lester as I know him you'll think him as fine and—and gorgeous as I do. Mamma, do you think your little Bleema would marry a man who doesn't just love you, and dad, too? It isn't like Lester is a nobody—a high-salaried fellow like him with a future. Why, the best will be none too good! He loves you both—told me so to-day. The one aim in his life is to do big things, to make you both proud, to make his name the biggest—"

"Feist—Feist—can't you talk to her? Tell her it's madness—tell her she's ruining herself."

"Why, Miss Bleema, there's nothing much a—a stranger like me can say at a time like this. It's only unfortunate that I happened to be here. If I were you, though, I think I'd take a little time to think this over. Sometimes a young girl—."

"I have thought it over, Mr. Feist. For weeks and weeks I've thought of nothing else. That's how sure I am—so terribly sure."

"I won't have it, I tell you! I'll wring his—"

"'Sh-h-h, Pelz. If you'll take my advice, you'll handle this thing without threats. Why not, Miss Bleema, even if you do feel so sure, give yourself a little more time to—"

"No! No! No!"

"Just a minute now. If you feel this way so strongly to-night, isn't it just possible that to-morrow, when you wake up, you may see things differently?"

"I tell you I'm going to France with him—on our honeymoon. It's all fixed if—moms—dad—won't you please—darlings—can't you see—my happiness—"

"O God, Roody, were ever parents in such a fix?"

"Listen to me, Miss Bleema, now: I'm an old friend of the family, and you don't need to take exception to what I'm going to suggest. If your heart is so set on this thing, all right then, make up your mind it's an engagement and—"

"By God, Feist, no!"

"Wait, Pelz, I tell you you're making a mistake with your state of excitement."

"Let Mr. Feist talk, Roody."

"Make up your mind as I was saying, Miss Bleema, that this engagement exists between you and—and this young man. Then, instead of doing the hasty thing and marrying next week, you remain here a happy, engaged girl until the company returns in three weeks, and meanwhile you will have time to know your own mind and—"

"No! No! No! I do know it! It's all fixed we're—"

"That's a fine idea of Mr. Feist's, Bleema darling. For mamma's sake, baby. For grandma's. If it's got to be an engagement, hold it until after he gets back. Don't go rushing in. Take time to think a little. France is no place for a honeymoon now—submarines and all."

"Oh, I know! You hope he'll get sunk with a submarine."

"Shame, Miss Bleema; shame!"

"All mamma means, darling, is take a little time and get a—a trousseau like a girl like you has to have. If your heart is so set on it, can't you do that much to please mamma? That much?"

"There's a trick. You want me to wait and then—"

"Miss Bleema, is my promise to you enough that there's no trick? On my respect for your parents and grandmother, there's no trick. If it is only to please them, wait those few weeks and do it more dignified. If it's got to be, then it's got to be. Am I right, Pelz?"

Mr. Pelz turned away, nodding his head, but with lips too wry to speak.

"O my God, yes! Mr. Feist, you're right. Bleema, promise us! Promise!"

"Just a matter of a few weeks more or less, Miss Bleema. Just so your parents are satisfied you know your own mind."

"I do!"

"Then, I say, if you still feel as you do, not even they have the right to interfere."

"Promise us, Bleema; promise us that!"

"I—I'll be engaged on your word of honor—without any fussing about it?"

"An engaged girl, Miss Bleema, like any other engaged girl."

"But dad—look at him—he won't—p-promise," trembling into tears.

"Of course he will—won't you, Pelz? And you know the reputation your father has for a man of his word."

"Will—will he promise?"

"You do; don't you, Pelz?"

Again the nod from the bitter inverted features.

"Now, Miss Bleema?"

"Well then, I—I—p-promise."

On a May-day morning that was a kiss to the cheek and even ingratiated itself into the bale-smelling, truck-rumbling pier-shed, Mr. Lester Spencer, caparisoned for high seas by Fifth Avenue's highest haberdasher, stood off in a little cove of bags and baggage, yachting-cap well down over his eyes, the nattiest thing in nautical ulsters buttoned to the chin. Beside him, Miss Norma Beautiful, her small-featured pink-and-whiteness even smaller and pinker from the depths of a great cart-wheel of rose-colored hat, completely swathed in rose-colored veiling.

"For a snap of my finger I'd spill the beans—that's how stuck on this situation I am!"

Mr. Spencer plunged emphatic arms into large patch-pockets, his chin projecting beyond the muffle of collar.

"Just you try it and see where it lands you!"

Then Miss Beautiful from the rosy depths of hat began to quiver of voice, jerky little sobs catching her up.

"I can't stand it! I b-bit off a b-bigger piece than I can swallow."

"Now, Darling Beautiful, I ask you would your own Lester do anything that wasn't just going to be the making of his girl as well as himself? Is it anything, Angel Beautiful, he is asking you to do except wait until—"

"I can't bear it, I tell you! A little red-haired kike like her! How do I know what I'm letting myself in for? There's only one ground for divorce in this state. What guarantee have I you'll get free on it?"

"My guarantee, Pussy. You're letting yourself in for a pink limousine to match that pink sweetness of yours and a jumping-rope of pearls to match those sweet teeth of yours and—"

"I want black pearls, Lester, like Lucille Du Pont's."

"Black, then. Why, Angel Beautiful, you just know that there's not a hair on any head in the world, much less a red one, I'd change for one of my girl's golden ones. You think I'd ever have known the little Reddie was on earth if she hadn't just flung herself at my head! She could have been six Rudolph Pelz's daughters, and I wouldn't have had eyes for her."

"But, Lester—she—she's right cute. What guarantee have I got?"

"Cross my heart and swear to die, Angel! Haven't I already sworn it to you a thousand thousand times? You wouldn't want me to close my eyes to the chance of a lifetime—you know you wouldn't, Beautiful, when it's your chance as much as mine. Both ours!"

"I—if only it was—over, Lester—all—over!"

"What's three weeks, Angel Beautiful? The very day I'm back I'll pull the trick with the little red head, and then I'm for letting things happen quick."

"And me, what'll I—"

"I'm going to move you into the solid-goldest hotel suite in this here town, Pussy. I'm going to form the Norma Beautiful Film Corporation in my own girl's name, the first pop out of the box. Why, there's just nowhere Rudolph Pelz's son-in-law can't get his girl in the little while I'm going to stick."

"How do I know? How do I know they won't find a way to hold you?"

"Why, Darling Beautiful, when they're through with me, they'll pay me off in my weight in gold. Haven't you said things often enough about your boy's temper when he lets it fly? You think they're going to let me cut up nonsense with that little Reddie of theirs? Why, that old man would pay with his right eye to protect her!"

"O God, it's rotten—a nice fellow like Pelz—a—"

"It's done every day, Gorgeous Beautiful. Anyway, there's no way to really hurt the rich. Look at Warren Norton—the Talcott family paid Warren two hundred cool thousand to give her back quietly. It's done every day, Gorgeousness. Many a fellow like me has gotten himself roped into a thing he wanted to get out of quietly. That little girl lassoed me. I should have eyes for a little Reddie like her with the Deep-Sea Pearl of the world my very own. I'm going to marry you, too, Gorgeousness. I'm going to see you right through, this time. Jump right out of the frying-pan into the hottest, sweetest fire!"

"I tell you I can't stand it! Promising to marry me with another one to see through before you get to me. It—it's terrible! I—"

"There you go again! The Norma Beautiful Film Corporation doesn't tickle my pink rose on the eardrums! She doesn't want it! Wouldn't have it!"

"I do, Lester; I do—only—only—I—the little Reddie—it's not right. She's a sweet little thing. I'm afraid, Lester—I think I must be going crazy! I wish to God I could hate you the way you ought to be hated. I tell you I can't stand it. You sailing off like this. The coming back—her—I'll kill myself during the ceremony. I—"

"You create a scene down here and you'll be sorry!"

"Lester—please!"

"They'll be here any minute now. They're late as it is. Look— everybody's on board already! One more blast, and I'll have to go, too. You just kick up nasty at the last minute and watch me!"

"I won't, Lester; I won't! I swear to God! Only, be good to me; be sweet to me, darling! Say good-by before they—she comes. I'm all right, darling. Please—please—"

He caught her to him then, and back in the sheltering cove of baggage thrust back her head, kissing deep into the veiling.

"Beautiful! Angel Beautiful!"

"Swear to me, Lester, you'll see me through."

"I swear, Beautiful."

"Swear to me, or hope to die and lose your luck!"

He kissed her again so that her hat tilted backward, straining at its pins.

"Hope to die and lose my luck."

"My own preciousness!" she said, her eyes tear-glazed and yearning up into his.

"'Sh-h, Pussy; here comes Sol Sopinsky to hurry me on board. Funny the Pelz crowd don't show up. Quit it! Here they come! That's their car. Cut it—quick!"

With noiselessly thrown clutch, the Pelz limousine drew up between an aisle of bales, its door immediately flung open. First, Mr. Pelz emerging, with an immediate arm held back for Mrs. Pelz. Last, Miss Pelz, a delightful paradox of sheer summer silk and white-fox furs, her small face flushed and carefully powdered up about the eyes.

"There he is, dad! Over there with Norma and Uncle Sol!"

"Don't run so, Bleema; he'll come over to you."

But she was around and through the archipelago of baggage.

"Lester darling! There was a tie-up at Thirty-third Street. I thought I'd die! Here's a little package of letters, love, one for each day on the steamer. Lester, have you got everything—are you all ready to leave your girlie—Hello, Norma—Uncle Sol! Lester are you—you sorry to leave you—your—"

"Now, now—no water-works!"

"My all! My own boy!" She drew him, to hide the quickening trembling of her lips, back behind the shelter of piled baggage.

"Lester darling—I—I didn't sleep a wink all night! I—I'm so nervous, dear. What if a submarine should catch you? What if you meet a French girl and fall in—"

"Now, now, Reddie! Is that what you think of your boy?"

"I don't, dearest; I don't! I keep telling myself I'm a silly—What's three weeks? But when it means separation from the sweetest, dearest—"

"'Sh-h-h, Angel darling! There's the last blast, and your father's angry. See him beckoning! The company's been on board twenty minutes already. Look—there's the sailors lined up at the gangplank—Bleema—"

"Promise me, Lester—"

"I do! I do promise! Anything! Look, girlie: Miss Beautiful will feel hurt the way we left her standing. It isn't nice—our hiding this way."

"I can't bear, dearest, to see you go—"

"Look! See—there's David Feist come down, too. You don't want him to see my girl make a cry baby of herself over a three weeks' trip—"

"You'll write, Lester, and cable every day?"

"You just know I will!"

"You won't go near the war?"

"You just know I won't!"

"You—"

"Your father, Bleema—let's not get him sore, hiding back here. Come; they'll draw up the plank on me."

"I'll be waving out from the edge of the pier, darling. I've got a special permit to go out there. I just couldn't stand not seeing my boy up to the last second. It's terrible for you to sneak off on a boat like this, darling, without flags and music the way it was before the war. I want music and flags when my boy goes off. Oh, Lester, I'll be working so hard on the sweetest little trousseau and the sweetest little—"

"Bleema, please! There's Miss Beautiful overhearing every word. Please!" "Well, good-by, Miss Beautiful; don't walk off with the studio while we're gone—take care of yourself—"

"Good-by—Mr. Spencer—b-bon voyage!"

"Hi, Mr. Feist, mighty handsome of you to come down to see me off!"

"Safe journey, Spencer! Remember you've got a precious piece of anxiety waiting back here for you."

"Oh, Mr. Feist—isn't—isn't—it awful—submarine-time and all? I—I just can't bear it!"

"Now! Now! Is that the way for a brave little girl to talk?"

"Bleema, if you can't control yourself, you had better go sit in the car. I'm ashamed before the company."

"Roody, the poor child!"

"He—that's the only way papa talks to me these days—fault-finding!"

"Now, now, Miss Bleema! Here—take mine; yours is all wet."

Another blast then, reverberating into the din.

"All aboard!"

"Good-by, Lester—good-by, darling—cable every day—by—good-by—boy!"

"Good-by, little Reddie! Thanks for the beautiful fruits and letters. Good-by, Mr. Pelz!"

"Play fair in the picture, Spencer. Don't hog the scenes. Help instead of hinder Sopinsky."

"Indeed I will, sir! Good-by, Mrs. Pelz!"

"Good-by, Lester! God bless you, my boy! Take care of yourself, and remember my little girl is—"

"Lester—Lester, a cable every day!"

"Bleema, will you please let the man catch his boat? It's an embarrassment to even watch you."

"Lester—Lester—"

"Yes, yes; good-by, everybody!"

"I'll be out at the pier-edge—wave back, darling!"

"Yes, yes! Good-by, Miss Beautiful! By, all!" And then, from an upper deck, more and more shouted farewells.

"They're moving! Come, Mr. Feist—please—with me—I've got the permit—don't let papa see us—come—the pier-edge!"

"Sure! This way, Miss Bleema—here—under—quick!"

Out in the open, May lay with Italian warmth over a harbor that kicked up the tiniest of frills. A gull cut through the blueness, winging it in festoons.

"Over this way, Miss Bleema; we can see her steaming out."

"Lester—good-by—Lester—a cable every day! I'll be waiting. Good-by!"

All this unavailingly flung to the great hulk of boat moving so proud of bow and so grandly out to sea, decks of faces and waving kerchiefs receding quickly.

"Good-by—darling—oh—oh—"

"'Sh-h—'sh-h-h, Miss Bleema. Here—take another of mine. Yours is all wet again. My—what a rainy day! Here—let me dry them for you. Hold still!"

"Oh—oh—cable every day, darling—write—oh, Mr. Feist—he don't see us—he's out of sight—don't wipe 'em so hard, Mr. Feist—you—you h-hurt!"

Out toward the blue, the billowing fields sailed away the gray steamer, cutting a path that sprayed and sang after. Sunlight danced and lay whitely as far as the eye could reach. It prolonged for those on shore the contour of the line of faces above each deck; it picked points of light from off everywhere—off smokestacks and polished railings, off plate-glass and brass-bound port-holes and even down the ship's flank, to where gilt letters spelled out shiningly:

"LUSITANIA."



A BOOB SPELLED BACKWARD

How difficult it is to think of great lives in terms of the small mosaics that go to make up the pattern of every man's day-by-day—the too tepid shaving-water; the badly laundered shirt-front; the three-minute egg; the too-short fourth leg of the table; the draught on the neck; the bad pen; the neighboring rooster; the misplaced key; the slipping chest-protector.

Richelieu, who walked with kings, presided always at the stitching of his red robes. Boswell says somewhere that a badly starched stock could kill his Johnson's morning. It was the hanging of his own chintzes that first swayed William Morris from epic mood to household utensils. Seneca, first in Latin in the whole Silver Age, prepared his own vegetables. There is no outgrowing the small moments of life, and to those lesser ones of us how often they become the large ones!

To Samuel Lipkind, who, in a span of thirty years, had created and carried probably more than his share of this world's responsibilities, there was no more predominant moment in all his day, even to the signing of checks and the six-o'clock making of cash, than that matinal instant, just fifteen minutes before the stroke of seven, when Mrs. Lipkind, in a fuzzy gray wrapper the color of her eyes and hair, kissed him awake, and, from across the hall, he could hear the harsh sing of his bath in the drawing.

There are moments like that which never grow old. For the fifteen years that Samuel Lipkind had reached the Two Dollar Hat Store before his two clerks, he had awakened to that same kiss on his slightly open mouth, the gray hair and the ever-graying eyes close enough to be stroked, the pungency of coffee seeming to wind like wreaths of mundane aroma above the bed, and always across the aisle of hallway that tepid cataract leaping in glory into porcelain.

Take the particular morning which ushers in our story, although it might have been any of twelve times three hundred others.

"Sammy!" This upon opening his door, then crossing to close the conservative five inches of open window and over to the bedside for the kissing him awake. "Sammy, get up!"

The snuggle away into the crotch of his elbow.

"Sammy! Thu, thu! I can't get him up! Sammy, a quarter to seven! You want to be late? I can't get him up!"

"M-m-m-m-m-m!"

"You want your own clerks to beat you to business so they can say they got a lazy boss?"

"I'm awake, ma." Reaching up to stroke her hair, thin and gray now, and drawn back into an early-morning knob.

"Don't splash in the bath-room so this morning, Sammy; it's a shame for the wall-paper."

"I won't"—drawing the cord of his robe about his waist, and as if they did not both of them know just how faithfully disregarded would be that daily admonition.

Then Mrs. Lipkind flung back the snowy sheets and bed-coverings, baring the striped ticking of the mattress.

"Hurry, Sammy! I'm up so long I'm ready for my second cup of coffee."

"Two minutes." And off across the hall, whistling, towel across arm.

It was that little early moment sublimated by nothing more than the fusty beginnings of a workaday, the mere recollecting of which was one day to bring a wash of tears behind his eyes and a twist of anguish into his heart.

Next breakfast, and to dine within reach of the coal-range which brews it is so homely a fashion that even Mr. Lipkind, upon whom such matters of bad form lay as a matter of course, was wont to remonstrate.

"What's the matter with the dining-room, ma? Since when have dining-rooms gone out of style?"

Pouring his coffee from the speckled granite pot, Mrs. Lipkind would smile up and over it.

"All I ask is my son should never have it worse than to eat all his lifetime in just such a kitchen like mine. Off my kitchen floor I would rather eat than off some people's fine polished mahogany."

The mahogany was almost not far-fetched. There was a blue-and-white spick-and-spanness about Mrs. Lipkind's kitchen which must lie within the soul of the housewife who achieves it—the lace-edged shelves, the scoured armament of dishpan, soup-pot, and what not; the white Swiss window-curtains, so starchy, and the two regimental geraniums on the sill; the roller-towel too snowy for mortal hand to smudge; the white sink, hand-polished; the bland row of blue-and-white china jars spicily inscribed to nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves. That such a kitchen could be within the tall and brick confines of an upper-Manhattan apartment-house was only another of the thousand thousand paradoxes over which the city spreads her glittering skirts. The street within roaring distance, the highway of Lenox Avenue flowing dizzily constantly past her windows, the interior of Mrs. Lipkind's apartment, from the chromos of the dear dead upon its walls to the upholstery of another decade against those walls, was as little of the day as if the sweep of the city were a gale across a mid-Victorian plain and the flow past the windows a broad river ruffled by wind.

"You're right, ma; there's not a kitchen in New York I'd trade it for. But what's the idea of paying rent on a dining-room?"

"Sa-y, if not for when Clara comes and how in America all young people got extravagant ideas, we was just as well off without one in our three rooms in Simpson Street."

"A little more of that mackerel, please."

You to whom the chilled grapefruit and the eggshell cup of morning coffee are a gastronomic feat not always easy to hurdle, raise not your digestive eyebrows. At precisely fifteen minutes past seven six mornings in the week, seven-thirty, Sundays, Mrs. Lipkind and her son sat down to a breakfast that was steamingly fit for those only who dwell in the headacheless kingdom of long, sleepful nights and fur-coatless tongues.

"A few more fried potatoes with it, Sammy?"

"Whoa! You want to feed me up for the fat boys' regiment!"

Mrs. Lipkind glanced quickly away, her profile seeming to quiver. "Don't use that word, Sam—even in fun—it's a knife in me."

"What word?"

"'Regiment.'"

He reached across to pat the vein-corduroyed back of her hand.

"My little sweetheart mamma," he said.

She, in turn, put out her hand over his, her old sagging throat visibly constricting in a gulp, and her eyes as if they could never be finished with yearning over him. "You're a good boy, Sammy."

"Sure!"

"I always say no matter what it is bad my life has had for me with my twenty-five years a widow, my only daughter to marry out six hundred miles away from me, my business troubles when I had to lose the little store what your papa left me, nothing ain't nothing, Sammy, when a mother can raise for herself a boy like mine."

"You mean when a fellow can pick out for himself a little sweetheart mamma like mine."

"Sammy, stop it with your pinching-me nonsense like I was your best girl!"

"Well, ain't you?"

She paused, her cup of coffee half-way to her lips, the lines of her face seeming to want to lift into what would be a smile. "No, Sammy; your mother knows she ain't, and if she was anything but a selfish old woman, she would be glad that she ain't."

"'Sh! 'Sh!" said Mr. Lipkind, reaching this time half across the table for a still steaming muffin and opening it so that its hot fragrance came out. '"Sh! No April showers! Uh! Uh! Don't you dare!"

"I ain't," said Mrs. Lipkind, smiling through her tear and dashing at it with the back of her hand. "For why should I when I got only everything to be thankful for?"

"Now you're shouting!"

"How you think, Sammy, Clara likes a cheese pie for supper to-night? Last week I could see she didn't care much for the noodle pudding I baked her."

Mr. Lipkind, who was ever so slightly and prematurely bald and still more slightly and prematurely rotund, suffered a rush of color then, his ears suddenly and redly conspicuous.

"That's—that's what I started to tell you last night, ma. Clara telephoned over to the store in the afternoon she—she thought she wouldn't come to supper this Wednesday night, ma."

"Sammy—you—you and Clara 'ain't got nothing wrong together, the way you don't see each other so much these two months?"

"Of course not, ma; it's just happened a few times that way. The trade's in town; that's all."

"How is it all of a sudden a girl in the wholesale ribbon business should have the trade to entertain like she was in the cloak-and-suit chorus?"

"It's not that Clara's busy to-night, ma. She—she only thought she—for a change—there's a little side table for two—for three—where she boards—she thought maybe if—if you didn't mind, I'd go over to her place for Wednesday-night supper for a change. You know how a girl like Clara gets to feeling obligated."

"Obligated from eating once a week supper in her own future house!"

"She asked I should bring you, too, ma, but I know how bashful you are to go in places like that."

"In such a place where it's all style and no food—yes."

"That's it; so we—I thought, ma, that is, if you don't mind, instead of Clara here to-night for supper, I—I'd go over to her place. If you don't mind, ma."

There was a silence, so light, so slight that it would not have even held the dropping of a pin, but yet had a depth and a quality that set them both to breathing faster.

"Why, of course, Sammy, you should go!"

"I—we thought for a change."

"You should have told me yesterday, Sammy, before I marketed poultry."

"I know, ma; I—just didn't. Clara only 'phoned at four."

"A few more fried potatoes?"

"No more."

"Sit up straight, Sam, from out your round shoulders."

"You ain't—mad, ma?"

"For why, Sammy, should I be mad that you go to Clara for a change to supper. I'm glad if you get a change."

"It's not that, ma. It's just that she asked it. You know how a person feels, her taking her Wednesday-night suppers here for more than five years and never once have I—we—set foot in any of her boarding-houses. She imagines she's obligated. You know how Clara is, so independent."

"You should go. I hear, too, how Mrs. Schulem sets a good table."

"I'll be home by nine, ma—you sure you don't mind?"

"I wouldn't mind, Sammy, if it was twelve. Since when is it that a grown-up son has to apologize to his mother if he takes a step without her?"

"You can believe me, ma, but I've got so it don't seem like theater or nothing seems like going out without my little sweetheart mamma on one arm and Clara on the other."

"It's not right, Sammy, you should spoil me so. Don't think that even if you don't let me talk about it, I don't know in my heart how I'm in yours and Clara's way."

"Ma, now just you start that talk and you know what I'll do—I'll get up and leave the table."

"Sammy, if only you would let me talk about it!"

"You heard what I said."

"To think my son should have to wait with his engagement for five years and never once let his mother ask him why it is he waits. It ain't because of to-night I want to talk about it, Sam, but if I thought it was me that had stood between you and Clara all these five years, if—if I thought it was because of me you don't see each other so much here lately, I—"

"Ma!"

"I couldn't stand it, son. If ever a boy deserved happiness, that boy is you. A boy that scraped his fingers to the bone to marry his sister off well. A boy that took the few dollars left from my notion-store and made such a success in retail men's hats and has given it to his mother like a queen. If I thought I was standing in such a boy's way, who ain't only a grand business man and a grand son and brother, but would make any girl the grandest husband that only his father before him could equal, I couldn't live, Sammy, I couldn't live."

"You should know how sick such talk makes me!"

"I haven't got hard feelings, Sammy, because Clara don't like it here."

"She does."

"For why should an up-to-date American girl like Clara like such an old-fashioned place as I keep? Nowadays, girls got different ideas. They don't think nothing of seventy-five-dollar suits and twelve-dollar shoes. I can't help it that it goes against my grain no matter how fine a money-maker a girl is. In the old country my sister Carrie and me never even had shoes on our feet until we were twelve, much less—"

"But, ma—"

"Oh, I don't blame her, Sam. I don't blame her that she don't like it the way I dish up everything on the table so we can serve ourselves. She likes it passed the way they did that night at Mrs. Goldfinger's new daughter-in-law's, where everything is carried from one to the next one, and you got to help yourself quick over your shoulders."

"Clara's like me, ma; she wants you to keep a servant to do the waiting on you."

"It ain't in me, Sam, to be bossed to by a servant, just like I can't take down off the walls pictures of your papa selig and your grandma, because it ain't stylish they should be there. It's a feeling in me for my own flesh and blood that nothing can change."

"Clara don't want you to change that, ma."

"She's a fine, up-to-date girl, Sam. A girl that can work herself up to head floor-lady in wholesale ribbons and forty dollars a week has got in her the kind of smartness my boy should have in his wife. I'm an old woman standing in the way of my boy. If I wasn't, I could go out to Marietta, Ohio, by Ruby, and I wouldn't keep having inside of me such terrible fears for my boy and—and how things are now on the other side and—and—"

"Now, now, ma; no April showers!"

"An old woman that can't even be happy with a good daughter like Ruby, but hangs always on her son like a stone around his neck!"

"You mean like a diamond."

"A stone, holding him down."

"Ma!" Mr. Lipkind pushed back, napkin awry at his throat and his eyes snapping points of light. "Now if you want to spoil my breakfast, just say so and I—I'll quit. Why should you be living with Ruby out in Marietta if you're happier here with me where you belong? If you knew how sore these here fits of yours make me, you'd cut them out—that's what you would. I'm not going over to Clara's at all now for supper, if that's how you feel about it."

Mrs. Lipkind rose then, crossed, leaning over the back of his chair and inclosing his face in the quivering hold of her two hands. "Sammy, Sammy, I didn't mean it! I know I ain't in your way. How can I be when there ain't a day passes I don't invite you to get married and come here to live and fix the flat any way what Clara wants or even move down-town in a finer one where she likes it? I know I ain't in your way, son. I take it back."

"Well, that's more like it."

"You mustn't be mad at mamma when she gets old-fashioned ideas in her head."

He stroked her hand at his cheek, pressing it closer.

"Sit down and finish your breakfast, little sweetheart mamma."

"Is it all right now, Sammy?"

"Of course it is!" he said, his eyes squeezed tightly shut.

"Promise mamma you'll go over by Clara's to-night."

"But—"

"Promise me, Sammy; I can't stand it if you don't."

"Alright, I'll go, ma."

The Declaration of Economic Independence is not always a subtle one. There was that about Clara Bloom, even to the rather Hellenic swing of her very tailor-made back and the firm, neat clack of her not too high heels, which proclaimed that a new century had filed her fetter-free from the nine-teen-centuries-long chain of women whose pin-money had too often been blood-money or the filched shekels from trousers pocket or what in the toga corresponded thereto.

And yet, when Miss Bloom smiled, which upon occasion she did spontaneously enough to show a gold molar, there were not only Hypatia and Portia in the straight line of her lips, but lurked in the little tip-tilt at the corners a quirk from Psyche, who loved and was so loved, and in the dimple in her chin a manhole, as it were, for Mr. Samuel Lipkind.

At six o'clock, where the wintry workaday flows into dusk and Fifth Avenue flows across Broadway, they met, these two, finding each other out in the gaseous shelter of a Subway kiosk. She from the tall, thin, skylightless skyscraper dedicated to the wholesale supply of woman's insatiable demand for the ribbon gewgaw; he from a plate-glass shop with his name inscribed across its front and more humbly given over to the more satiable demand of the male for the two-dollar hat. There was a gold-and-black sign which ran across the not inconsiderable width of Mr. Lipkind's store-front and which invariably captioned his four inches of Sunday-news-paper advertisement:

SAMMY LIPKIND WANTS YOUR HEAD

As near as it is possible for the eye to simulate the heart, there was exactly that sentiment in his glance now as he found out Miss Bloom, she in a purple-felt hat and the black scallops of escaping hair, blacker because the red was out in her cheeks.

He broke into the kind of smile that lifted his every feature, screw-lines at his eyes coming out, head bared, and his greeting beginning to come even before she was within hearing distance of it.

There was in Mr. Lipkind precious little of Lothario, Launcelot, Galahad, or any of that blankety-blank-verse coterie. There remains yet unsung the lay of the five-foot-five, slightly bald, and ever so slightly rotund lover. Falstaff and Romeo are the extremes of what Mr. Lipkind was the not unhappy medium. Offhand in public places, men would swap crop conditions and city politics with him. Twice, tired mothers in railway stations had volunteered him their babies to dandle. Young women, however, were not all impervious to him, and uncrossed their feet and became consciously unconscious of him across street-car aisles. In his very Two Dollar Hat Store, Sara Minniesinger, hooked of profile, but who had impeccably kept his debits and credits for twelve years back under the stock-balcony and a green eye-shade, was wont to cry of evenings over and for him into her dingy pillow. He was so unconscious of this that, on the twelfth anniversary of her incarceration beneath the stock-balcony, he commissioned his mother to shop her a crown of thorns in the form of a gold-handled umbrella with a bachelor-girl flash-light attachment.

There are men like that, to whom life is not only a theosophy of one God, but of one women who is sufficient thereof. When Samuel Lipkind greeted Clara Bloom there was just that in his ardently appraising glance.

"Didn't mean to keep you waiting, Clara—a last-minute customer. You know."

"I've been counting red heads and wishing the Subway was pulled by white horses."

"Say, Clara, but you look a picture! Believe me, Bettina, that is some lid!"

Miss Bloom tucked up a rear strand of curl, turning her head to extreme profile for his more complete approval.

"Is it an elegant trifle, Sam? I ask you is it an elegant trifle?"

"Clara, it's—immense! The best yet! What did it set you back?"

"Don't ask me! I'm afraid just saying it would give your mother heart-failure by mental telepathy."

He linked her arm. "Whatever you paid, it's worth the money. It sets you off like a gipsy queen."

"None of that, Sam! Mush is fattening."

"Mush nothing! It's the truth."

"Hurry. Schulem's got a new rule—no reserving the guest-table."

They let themselves be swept into the great surge of the underground river with all of the rather thick-skinned unsensitiveness to shoulder-to-shoulder contact which the Subway engenders. Swaying from straps in a locked train, which tore like a shriek through a tube whose sides sweated dampness, they talked in voices trained to compete with the roar.

"What's the idea, Clara? When you telephoned yesterday I was afraid maybe it was—Eddie Leonard cutting in on my night again."

"Eddie nothing. Is it a law, Sam, that I have to eat off your mother every Wednesday night of my life?"

"No—only—you know how it is when you get used to things one way."

"I told you I had something to talk over, didn't I?"

They were rounding a curve now, so that they swayed face to face, nose to nose.

A few crinkles, frequent with him of late, came out in rays from his eyes.

"Is it anything you—you couldn't say in front of ma?"

"Yes."

He inserted two fingers into his collar, rearing back his head.

"Anything wrong, Clara?"

"You mean is anything right."

They rode in silence after that, both of them reading in three colors the border effulgencies of frenzied advertising.

But when they emerged to a quieter up-town night that was already pointed with a first star, he took her arm as they turned off into a side-street that was architecturally a barracks to the eye, brownstone front after brownstone front after brownstone front. Block after block of New York's side-streets are sunk thus in brown study.

"You mustn't be so ready to be put out over every little thing I say, Clara. Is it anything wrong to want you up at the house just as often as we can get you?"

"No, Sam; it ain't that."

"Well then, what is it?"

"Oh, what's the use beginning all that again? I want to begin to-night where we usually leave off."

"Is it—is it something we've talked about before, Clara?"

"Yes—and no. We've talked so much and so long without ever getting anywheres—what's the difference whether we've ever talked it before or not?"

"You just wait, Clara; everything is going to come out fine for us."

Her upper lip lifted slightly. "Yes," she said; "I've heard that before."

"We're going to be mighty happy some day, just the same, and don't you let yourself forget it. We've got good times ahead."

"Oh dear!" she sighed out.

"What?"

"Nothing."

He patted her arm. "You'll never know, Clara, the torture it's been for me even your going out those few times with Eddie Leonard has put me through. You're mine, Clara; a hundred Eddies couldn't change that."

"Who said anybody wanted to change it?"

He patted her arm again very closely. "You're a wonderful girl, Clara."

They turned up the stoop of Mrs. Schulem's boarding-house, strictly first-class. How they flourish in the city, these institutions of the Not Yet, the Never Was, the Never Will Be, and the Has Been! They are the half-way houses going up and the mausoleums coming down life's incline, and he who lingers is lost to the drab destiny of this or that third-floor-back hearthstone, hot and cold running water, all the comforts of home. That is why, even as she moved up from the rooming to the boarding-house and down from the third-floor back to the second-story front, there was always under Clara Bloom's single bed the steamer-trunk scarcely unpacked, and in her heart the fear that, after all, this might not be transiency, but home. That is why, too, she paid her board by the week and used printed visiting-cards.

And yet, if there exists such a paradox as an aristocracy among boarding-houses, Mrs. Schulem's was of it. None of the boiled odors lay on her hallways, which were not papered, but a cream-colored fresco of better days. There was only one pair of bisques, no folding-bed, and but the slightest touch of dried grasses in her unpartitioned front parlor. The slavey who opened the door was black-faced, white-coated, and his bedraggled skirts were trousers with a line of braid up each seam. Two more of him were also genii of the basement dining-hall, two low rooms made into one and entirely bisected by a long-stemmed T of dining-table, and between the lace-curtained windows a small table for two, with fairly snowy napkins flowering out of its water-tumblers, and in its center a small island of pressed-glass vinegar-cruet, bottle of darkly portentous condiment, glass of sugar, and another of teaspoons.

It was here that Miss Bloom and Mr. Lipkind finally settled themselves, snugly and sufficiently removed from the T-shaped battalion of eyes and ears to insure some privacy.

"Well," said Mr. Lipkind, unflowering his napkin, spreading it across his knees, and exhaling, "this is fine!"

There was an aura of authoritativeness seemed to settle over Miss Bloom.

This to one of the black-faced genii: "Take care of us right to-night, Johnson, and I'll fix it up with you. See if you can't manage it in the kitchen to bring us a double portion of those banana fritters I see they're eating at the big table. Say they're for Miss Bloom. I'll fix it up with you."

"Now, Clara, don't you go bothering with extras for me. This is certainly fine. Sorry you never asked me before."

"You know why I never asked you before."

"Why, you never saw the like how pleased ma was. She was the first one to fall in with the idea of my coming to-night."

She dipped into a shallow plate of amber soup. "I know," she said, "all about that."

"Ma's a good sport about being left at home alone."

"How do you know? You never tried it until to-night. I'll bet it's the first time since that night you first met me, five years ago, at Jerome Fertig's, and it wouldn't have been then if she hadn't had the neuralgia and it was your own clerk's wedding."

He laid down his spoon, settling back a bit from the table, pulling the napkin across his knees out into a string.

"I thought we'd gone all over that, Clara."

"Yes; but where did it get us? That's why we're here to-night, Sam—to get somewheres."

He crumbed his bread. "What do you mean, Clara?"

She forced his slow gaze to hers calmly, her hands outstretched on the table between them. "I've made up my mind, Sam. Things can't go on this way no longer between us."

"Just what do you mean by that?"

"I mean that we've either got to act or quit."

He was rolling the bread pills again, a flush rising. "You know where I stand, Clara, on things between us."

"Yes, Sam, and now you know where I stand." The din of the dining-room surged over the pause between them. Still in the purple hat, and her wrap thrown back over her chair, she held that pause coolly, level of eye. "I'm thirty-one now, Sam, three weeks and two days older than you. I don't see the rest of my days with the Arnstein Ribbon Company. I'm not getting any younger. Five years is a long time out of a girl's life. Five of the best ones, too. She likes to begin to see her future when she reaches my age. A future with a good providing man. You and me are just where we started five years ago."

"I know, Clara, and I'd give my right hand to change things."

"If I'd been able to save a cent, it might be different. But I haven't—I'm that way. I make big and spend big. But you can't blame a girl for wanting to see her future. That's me, and I'm not ashamed to say it."

"If only, Clara, I could get you to see things my way. If you'd be willing to try it with ma. Why, with a little diplomacy from you, ma'd move heaven and earth to please you."

"There's no use beginning that, Sam; it's a waste of time. Why—why, just the difference in the way me and—and your mother feel on money matters is enough. There's no use to argue that with me; it's a waste of time."

He lifted and let droop his shoulders with something of helplessness in the gesture. "What's the use, then? I'm sure I don't know what more to say to you, Clara. Oh, don't think my mother don't realize how things are between us—it's all I can do to keep denying and denying."

"Well, you can't say she knows from my telling."

"No; but there's not a day she don't say to me, particularly these last few times since you been breaking your dates with us pretty regular—I—well she sees how it worries me, and there's not a day she don't say to me, 'Sammy,' she said to me, only this morning, 'if I thought I was keeping you and Clara apart—'"

"A blind man could see it."

"There's not a day passes over her head she don't offer to go to live with my sister in Ohio, when I know just how that one month of visiting her that time nearly killed her."

"Funny visiting an own daughter could nearly kill anybody."

"It's my brother-in-law, Clara. My mother couldn't no more live with Isadore Katz than she could fly. He's a fine fellow and all that, but she's not used to a man in the house that potters around the kitchen and the children's food and things like Isadore loves to. She's used to her own little home and her own little way."

"Exactly."

"If I want to kill my mother, Clara, all I got to do is put her away from me in her old age. Even my sister knows it. 'Sammy,' she wrote to me that time after ma's visit out there, 'I love our mother like you do, but I got a nervous husband who likes his own ways about the housekeeping and the children and the cooking, and nobody knows better than me that the place for ma to be happy is with you in her own home and her own ways of doing.'"

"I call that a nerve for a sister to let herself out like that."

"It's not nerve, Clara; it's the truth. Ruby's a good girl in her way."

"What about you—ain't your life to be thought of? Ain't it enough she was married off with enough money for her husband to buy a half-interest in a ladies' ready-to-wear store out there?"

"Why, if I was to bring my little wife to that flat of ours, Clara, or any other kind further down-town that she'd want to pick out for herself, I think my mother would just walk on her hands and knees to make things pleasant for her. Maybe you don't know it, but on your Wednesday nights up at the house, she is up at five o'clock in the morning fixing around and cooking the things she thinks you'll like."

"I'm not saying a word against your mother, Sam. I think she's a grand woman, and I admire a fellow that's good to his mother. I always say, 'Give me a fellow every time that is good to his mother and that fellow will be good to his wife.'"

"I'm not pretending to say ma mayn't be a little peculiar in her ways, but you never saw an old person that wasn't, did you? Neither am I saying it's exactly any girl's idea to start out married life with a third person in—"

"I've always swore to myself, Sam, and I'm not ashamed to admit it, that if I can't marry to improve myself, I'm going to stay single till I can. I'm not a six-dollar-a-week stenog that has to marry for enough to eat. I can afford to buy a seventy-five dollar suit every winter of my life and twelve-dollar shoes every time I need them. The hat on my head cost me eighteen-fifty wholesale, without having to be beholding to nobody, and—"

"Ma don't mean those things, Clara. It's just when she hears the price girls pay for things nowadays she can't help being surprised the way things have changed."

"I'm not a small potato, Sam. I never could live like a small potato."

"Why, you know there's nothing I like better than to see you dressed in the best that money can buy. You heard what I said about that hat just now, didn't you? Whatever it cost, it's worth it. I can afford to dress my little wife in the best that comes. There's nothing too good for her."

"Yes; but—"

"All ma needs, Clara, is a little humoring. She's had to stint so all her life, it's a little hard to get her used to a little prosperity. Take me. Why, if I bring her home a little shawl or a pockabook that cost, say, ten dollars, you think I tell her? No. I say, 'Here's a bargain I picked up for three ninety-eight,' and right away she's happy with something reduced."

"Your mother and me, Sam, and, mind you, I'm not saying she isn't a grand old lady, wasn't no more made to live together than we was made to fly. I couldn't no more live her way than she could live mine. I've got a practical head on my shoulders—I don't deny it—and I want to improve ourselves in this world when we marry, and have an up-to-date home like every young couple that starts out nowadays."

"Sure, we—"

"That flat of yours up there or any other one under the conditions would be run like the ark. I'm an up-to-date girl, I am. There's not a girl living would be willing to marry a well-off fellow like you and go huck herself in a place she couldn't even have the running of herself or have her own say-so about the purse-strings. It may sound unbecoming, but when I marry I'm going to better myself, I am."

"I—why—"

"If she can't even stand for her own son-in-law walking into his own kitchen in his own house—Oh, you don't find me starting my married life that way at this late date. I haven't held off five years for that."

Mr. Lipkind pushed back his but slightly tasted food, lines of strain and a certain whiteness out in his face. "It—it just seems awful, Clara, this going around in a circle and not getting anywheres."

"I'm at the end of my rope, I am."

"I see your point in a way, Clara, but, my God! a man's mother is his mother! It's eating up my life just as it's eating yours, but what you going to do about it? It just seems the best years of our life are going, waiting for God knows what."

Hands clasped until her finger-nails whitened, Miss Bloom leaned across the table, her voice careful and concentrated. "Now you said something! That's why you and me are here alone together to-night. There's not going to be a sixth year of this kind of waiting between us. Things have got to come to a head. I've got a chance, Sam, to marry. Eddie Leonard has asked me."

"I—thought so."

"Eddie Leonard ain't a Sam Lipkind, but after the war his five-thousand-dollar job is down at Arnstein's waiting for him, and he's got a good stiff bank-account saved as good as yours and—and no strings to it. I believe in a girl facing those facts the same as any other facts. Why, I—this war and all—why, if anything was to happen to you to-morrow—us unmarried this way—I'd be left high and dry without so much as a penny to show for the best five years of my life. We've got to do one thing or another, Sam. I believe in a girl being practical as well as romantic."

"I—see your point, Clara."

"I'm done with going around in this circle of ours."

"You mean—"

"You know what I mean."

The lower half of Mr. Lipkind's face seemed to lock, as it were, into a kind of rigidity which shot out his lower jaw. "I'll see Eddie Leonard burning like brimstone before I let him have you!"

"Well?"

"God! I don't know what to say—I don't know what to say!"

"That's your trouble, Sam; you're so chicken-hearted you—"

"My father died when I was five, Clara, and no matter what my feelings are to you, there's no power on earth can make me quit having to be him as well as a son to my mother. Maybe it sounds softy to you—but if I got to pay with her happiness for—ours—then I never want happiness to the day I die."

"In other words, it's the mother first."

"Don't put it that way—it's her—age—first. It ain't what she wants and don't want; it's what she's got to have. My mother couldn't live away from me."

"She could if you were called to war."

There was something electric in the silence that followed, something that seemed to tighten the gaze of each for the other.

"But I haven't been—yet."

"The next draft will get you."

"Maybe."

"Well, what'll you do then?"

"That's something me and ma haven't ever discussed. The war hasn't been mentioned in our house for two years—except that the letters don't come from Germany, and that's a grief to her. There's enough time for her to cross that bridge when we come to it. She worries about it enough."

"If I was a man I'd enlist, I would!"

"I'd give my right hand to. Every other night I dream I'm a lieutenant."

"Why, there's not a fellow I know that hasn't beaten the draft to it and enlisted for the kind of service he wants. I know a half a dozen who have got in the home guard and things and have saved themselves by volunteering from being sent to France."

"I wouldn't dodge the front thataway. I'd like to enlist as a private and then work myself up to lieutenant and then on up to captain and get right into the fray on the front. I—"

"You bet, if I was a fellow, I'd enlist for the kind of home service I wanted—that's what Eddie and all the fellows are doing."

"So would I, Clara, if I was what you call a—free man. There's nobody given it more thought than me."

"Well, then, why don't you? Talk's cheap."

"You know why, Clara, to get back to going around in a circle again."

"But you've got to go, sooner or later. You've got a comfortable married sister and independent circumstances of your own to keep your mother; you haven't got a chance for exemption."

"I don't want exemption."

"Well, then, beat the draft to it."

"I—Most girls ain't so anxious to—to get rid of their best fellows, Clara."

"Silly! Can't you see the point? If—if you'd enlist and go off to camp, I—I could go and live near you there like Birdie Harberger does her husband. See?"

"You mean—"

"Then—God forbid anything should happen to you!—I'm your wife. You see, Sam?"

"Why, Clara—"

"You see what I mean. But nothing can happen this way, because if you try to enlist in some mechanical department where they need you in this country—you see, Sam? See?"

"I—see."

"Your mother would have to get used to things then, Sam—it would be the easiest for her. An old lady like her couldn't go trailing around the outskirts of a camp like your wife could. Think of the comfort it'll be to her to have me with you if she can't be. She'll get so used to—living alone—"

"I—You mustn't talk that way to me, Clara. When I'm called to serve my country, I'm the first one that will want to go. I've given more money already than I can afford to help the boys who are at the front. So far as I'm concerned, enlisting like this with—with you—around, would be the happiest thing ever happened to me, but—well, you see for yourself."

"You mean, then, you won't?"

"I mean, Clara, I can't."

She was immediately level of tone again and pushed back, placing her folded napkin beside her place, patting it down.

"Well, then, Sam, I'm done."

"'Done,' Clara?"

"Yep. That lets me out. I've given you every chance to make this thing possible. Your mother is no better and no different than thousands and thousands of other mothers who are giving their sons, only, she is better off than most, because she's provided for. It's all right for a fellow's mother to come first, maybe, but if his wife isn't even to come second or third or tenth, then it's about time to call quits. I haven't made up my mind to this in a day. I'm done."

"Clara—"

"Ed has asked me. I don't pretend he's my ideal, but he's more concerned about my future than he is about anybody else's. If I'm ready to leave with him on that twelve-o'clock train for Boston to-morrow, where he's going to be put in the clerical corps at Camp Usonis, we'll be married there to-morrow night, and I'll settle down somewhere near camp as long as I can. He's got a good nest-egg if—God forbid!—anything should happen. That's the whole thing in a nutshell."

"My God! Clara, this is awful! Eddie Leonard he's not your kind; he—"

"I've given you first chance, Sam. That proves how you stand with me. A one! Ace high! First! Nobody can ever take your place with me. Don't be a boob coming and going, Sam; you're one now not to see things and you'll be another one spelled backward if you don't help yourself to your chance when it comes. You've got your life in front of you, and your mother's got hers in back of her. Now choose."

"My God! Clara, this is—terrible! Why—I'd rather be a thousand boobs than take my mother's heart and tear it to pieces."

"You won't?"

"I can't."

"Don't say that, Sam. Go home and—sleep on it. Think it over. Please! Come to your senses, honey. Telephone me at eleven to keep me from catching that twelve-o'clock train. Don't let me take it with Eddie. Think it over, Sam. Honey—our—future—don't throw it away! Don't let me take that twelve-o'clock train!"

There were tears streaming from her eyes, and her lips, so carefully firm, were beginning to tremble. "You can't blame a girl, Sam, for wanting to provide for her future. Can you, Sam? Think it over. Please! I'll be praying when eleven o'clock comes to-morrow morning for you to telephone me. Please, Sam—think!"

He dropped his face low, lower toward the table, trembling under the red wave that surged over him and up into the roots of his hair. "I'll think it over, Clara—my girl—my own girl!"

As if the moments themselves had been woven by her flying amber needles into a whole cloth of meditation, Mrs. Lipkind, beside a kitchen lamp that flowed in gracious light, knitted the long, quiet hours of her evening into fabric, her face screwed and out of repose and occasionally the lips moving. Age is prone to that. Memories love to be mumbled and chewed over—the unconscious kind of articulation which comes with the years and for which youth has a wink and a quirk.

A tiger cat with overfed sides and a stare that seemed to doze purred on the window-ledge, gold and unswerving of eye. The silence was like the singing inside of a shell, and into it rocked Mrs. Lipkind.

By nine o'clock she was already glancing up at the clock, cocking her head to each and every of night's creaks.

By half after nine there were small and frequent periods of peering through cupped hands down into a street so remote that its traffic had neither shape nor identity. Once she went down a long slit of hallway to the front door, opening it and gazing out upon a fog-filled corridor that was papered in embossed leatherette, one speckled incandescent bulb lighting it sadly. There was something impregnable, even terrible to her in the featureless stare of the doors of three adjoining apartments. She tiptoed, almost ran, poor dear! with the consciousness of some one at her heels, back to the kitchen, where at least was the warm print of the cat's presence; fell to knitting again, clacking her needles for the solace of explainable sound.

Identically with the round moment of ten Mr. Lipkind entered, almost running down the hallway.

"Hello, ma! Think I got lost? Just got to talking and didn't realize. Haven't been worried, ma? Afraid?"

She lifted her head from his kiss. "'Afraid!' What you take me for? For why should I be worried at only ten o'clock? Say, I'm glad if you stay out for recreation."

He kissed her again, shaking out of his coat and unwinding his muffler. "I could just see you walking the floor and looking out of the window."

"Sa-y, I been so busy all evening I didn't have time to think. I'm not such a worrier no more like I used to be. Like the saying is—life is too short."

He drew up beside her, lifting her needles off her work. "Little sweetheart mamma, why don't you sit on the big sofa in the front room where it's more comfortable?"

"You can't make, Sammy, out of a pig's ear a silk stocking."

He would detain her hands, his eyes puckered and, so intent upon her.

"You had a good time, Sammy?"

"You'd be surprised, ma, what a nice place Clara boards at."

"What did they have to eat? Good cooking?"

"Not for a fellow that's used to my boarding-house."'

"What?"

"I couldn't tell if it was soup or finger-bowls they served for the first course."

"I know—stylish broth. Let me warm you up a little of my thick barley soup that's left over from—"

He pressed her down. "Please, ma! I'm full up. I couldn't. They had pink ice-cream, too, with pink cake and—"

"Such mess-food what is bad for you. I'm surprised how Clara keeps her good complexion. Let me fix you some fried—"

"Ma, I tell you I couldn't. It's ten o'clock. You mustn't try to fatten me up so. In war-time a man has got to be lean."

She sat back suddenly and whitely quiet. "That's—twice already to-day, Sam, you talk like that."

He took up her lax hand, moving each separate finger up and down, eyes lowered. "Why not? Doesn't it ever strike you, mamma, that you and me are—are kidding ourselves along on this war business, pretending to each other there ain't no war?"

She laid a quick hand to her breast. "What you mean, Sammy?"

"Why, you know what I mean, ma. I notice you read the war news pretty closely, all right."

"Sammy, you mean something!"

"Now, ma, there's no need to get excited right away. Think of the mothers who haven't even got bank-accounts whose sons have got to go."

"Sammy—you 'ain't been—"

"No, no; I haven't."

"You have! I can see it in your face! You've come home with some news to break. You been drafted!"

He held her arms to her sides, still pressing her down to her chair. "I tell you I haven't! Can't you take my word for it?"

"Swear to me, Sammy!"

"All right; I swear."

"Swear to me on your dead father who is an angel in heaven!"

"I swear—thataway."

She was still pressing against her breathing. "You're keeping something back. Sammy, is it that we got mail from Germany? From Aunt Carrie? Bad news—O my God!"

"No! No! Who could I get mail from there any more than you've been getting it for the last two years? Mamma, if you're going to be this excitable and get yourself sick, I won't talk over anything with you. I'll quit."

"You got something, Sammy, to break to me. I can read you like a book."

"I'm done. If I can't talk facts over with you without your going to pieces this way, I'm done. I quit."

She clasped her hands, her face pleading up to him. "Sammy, what is it? If you don't tell me, I can't stand it. Sammy?"

"Will you sit quiet and not get excited?"

"Please, Sammy, I will."

"It's this: you see, ma, the way the draft goes. When a fellow's called to war, drafted, he's got to go, no questions asked. But when a fellow enlists for war, volunteers, you see, before the government calls him, then thataway he can pick out for himself the thing he wants to be in the army. Y'see? And then maybe the thing he picks out for himself can keep him right here at home. Y'see, ma—so he don't have to go away. See the point?"

"You mean when a boy enlists he offers himself instead of gets offered."

"Exactly."

"You got something behind all this. You mean you—you want to enlist."

"Now, ma—you see, if I was to enlist—and stay right here in this country—with you near the camp or, as long as it's too rough life for you, with—with Clara there—a woman to look in on—"

"Sammy—you mean it's enlistment!"

Her voice rose in velocity; he could feel her pulse run beneath his fingers.

"It's the best way, ma. The draft is sure to get me. Let me beat it and keep myself home—near you. We might as well face the music, ma. They'll get me one way or another. Let me enlist now, ma. Like a man. Right away. For my country!"

Do you know the eyes of Bellini's "Agony in a Garden"? Can you hear for yourself the note that must have been Cassandra's when she shouted out her forebodings? There were these now in the glance and voice of Mrs. Lipkind as she drew back from him, her face actually seeming to shrivel.

"No, Sammy! No! No! No!"

"Ma—please—"

"You wouldn't! You couldn't! No, Sammy—my son!"

"Ma, for God's sake don't go on so!"

"Then tell me you wouldn't! Against your own flesh and blood! Tell me you wouldn't!"

"No, no, ma! For God's sake, don't take a fit—a stroke—no, no; I wouldn't—I wouldn't!"

"Your own blood, Sammy! Your own baby cousins what I tucked you in bed with—mine own sister's children! Her babies what slept with you. Mine own sister who raised me and worked down her hands to the bone to make it so with my young husband and baby we could come to America—no—no!"

"Mamma, for God's sakes—"

"Three years like a snake here inside of it's eating me—all night—all day—I'm a good American, Sammy; I got so much I should be thankful for to America. Twenty-five years it's my home, the home where I had prosperity and good treatment, the home where I had happiness with your papa and where he lies buried, but I can't give you to fight against my own, Sammy—to be murdered by your own—my sister what never in her life harmed a bird—my child and her children—cousins—against each other. My beautiful country what I remember with cows and green fields and clover—always the smell of clover. It ain't human to murder against your own flesh and blood for God knows what reason!"

"Mamma, there is a reason it—"

"I tell you I'm a good American, Sammy. For America I give my last cent, but not to stick knives in my own—it ain't human—Why didn't I die before we got war? What good am I here? In my boy's way for his country—his marriage—his happiness—why don't I die?"

"Ma, I tell you you mustn't! You're making yourself sick. Let me fan you. Here, ma, I didn't mean it. See—I'm holding you tight. I won't never let go. You're my little sweetheart mamma. You mustn't tremble like that. I'm holding you tight—tight—little mamma."

"My boy! My little boy! My son! My all! All in their bed together. Three. Her two. Mine. The smell of clover—my boy—Sammy—Sam—" She fainted back into his arms suddenly, very white and very quiet and very shriveled.

He watched beside her bed the next five hours of the night, his face so close above hers that, when she opened her eyes, his were merged into one for her, and the clasp of his hand never left hers.

"You all right, ma? Sure? Sure you don't need the doctor?"

She looked up at him with a tired, a burned-out, an ashamed smile. "The first time in my life, Sammy, such a thing ever happened to me."

He pressed a chain of close kisses to the back of her hand, his voice far from firm. "It was me, ma. I'll never forgive myself. My little mamma, my little mamma sweetheart!"

"I feel fine, son; only, with you sitting here all night, you don't let me sleep for worry that you ain't in bed."

"I love it. I love to sit here by you and watch you sleep. You're sure you've no fever? Sure?"

"I'm well, Sammy. It was nothing but what you call a fainting-fit. For some women it's nothing that they should faint every time they get a little bit excited. It's nothing. Feel my hands—how cool! That's always a sign—coolness."

He pressed them both to his lips, blowing his warm breath against them.

"There now—go to sleep."

The night-light burning weakly, the great black-walnut bedstead ponderous in the gloom, she lay there mostly smiling and always shamefaced.

"Such a thing should happen to me at my age!"

"Try to sleep, ma."

"Go in your room to bed, and then I get sleep. Do you want your own clerks should beat you to business to-morrow?"

"A little whisky?"

"Go away; you got me dosed up enough with such Schnapps."

"The light lower?"

"No. If you don't go in your room, I lay here all night with my eyes open, so help me!"

He rose, stiff and sore-kneed, hair awry, and his eyes with the red rims of fatigue. "You'll sure ring the little bell if you want anything, ma?"

"Sure."

"You promise you won't get up to fix breakfast."

"If I don't feel good, I let you fix mine."

"Good night, little sweetheart mamma."

"You ain't—mad at me, Sam?"

"Mad! Why, ma, you mustn't ask me a—a thing like that; it just kills me to hear you. Me that's not even fit to black your shoes! Mad at you? Why, I—I—Good night—good—night—ma."

* * * * *

At just fifteen minutes before seven, to the pungency of coffee and the harsh sing of water across the hall, Mrs. Lipkind in a fuzzy wrapper the color of her eyes and hair, kissed her son awake.

"Sam! Sammy! Get up! Thu, thu! I can't get him up in the morning!"

The snuggle away and into the crotch of his elbow.

"Sam-my—quarter to seven!"

He sprang up then, haggard, but in a flood of recollection and remorse. "Ma, I must 'a' dropped off at the last minute. You all right? What are you doing up? Go right back! Didn't I tell you not to get up?"

"I been up an hour already; that's how fine I feel. Get up, Sammy; it's late."

He flung on his robe, trying to withdraw her from the business of looping back the bed-clothing over the footboard and pounding into the pillows.

"I tell you I won't have it! You got to lay in bed this morning."

"I'm all right, Sammy. Wouldn't I say so if I wasn't?" But she sat down rather weakly on the edge of the bed, holding the right side of her, breathing too hard.

"I—I shouldn't have beat that pillow is all. Let me get my breathing. I'm all right." Nevertheless, she let him relax her to his pillow, draw the covers down from the footboard, and cover her.

"This settles it," he said, quietly. "I'm going to get a doctor."

She caught his hand. "If—if you want to get me excited for sure, just you call a doctor—now—before I talk with you a minute—I want to talk—I'm all right, Sammy, if you let me talk to you. One step to that telephone, and I get excited—"

"Please, ma—"

"Sammy?"

"Yes."

"Will you listen to me and do like I want it?"

"Yes."

"I—been a bad old woman."

"That's right—break my heart."

"I got a brave boy for a son, and I want to make from him a coward."

"Ma—please!"

"I laid saying to myself all night, a mother should have such a son like mine and make things hard for him yet!"

"Please, get it all out of your head—"

"From America what has given to me everything I should hold back my son from fighting for. In war, it ain't your own flesh and blood what counts; it's the flesh and blood of your country—not, Sam? I been thinking only it's my family affair. If God lets be such a terrible thing like war, there is somewhere a good reason for it. I want you to enlist, Sammy, for your country. Not for in an office, but for where they need you. I want you to enlist to get some day to be such a lieutenant and a captain like you used to play it with tin soldiers. I want—"

"Mamma, mamma, you know you don't mean it!"

"I want it, I tell you. All night I worked on it how dumb I've been, not right away to see it—last night. With Clara near you in the camp—"

"Ma, I didn't mean it that way; I—"

"Clara near you for a woman to look in on, I been so dumb not to right away see it. I'm glad you let it out, Sam. I wouldn't take five thousand dollars it didn't happen—I feel fine—I want it—I—"

"I didn't mean it, ma—I swear! Don't rub it in this way—please—please—"

"Why, I never wanted anything in my life like I want this, Sammy—that you should enlist—a woman to look in on—I been a bad woman, Sammy, I—I—oh—"

It was then that Mr. Lipkind tore to the telephone, his hands so frenzied that they would not properly hold the receiver.

At eight o'clock, and without even a further word, Mrs. Lipkind breathed out quietly, a little tiredly, and yet so eloquent of eye. To her son, pleading there beside her for the life she had not left to give, it was as if the swollen bosom of some stream were carrying her rapidly but gently down its surface, her gaze back at him and begging him to stay the current.

"Mamma! Darling! Doctor—please—for God's sakes—please—she wants something—-she can't say it—give it to her! Try to make her tell me what she wants—she wants something—this is terrible—don't let her want something—mamma—just one word to me—try—try—O my God—Doctor—"

A black arm then reached down to withdraw him from the glazed stare which had begun to set in from the pillow.

By ten o'clock a light snow had set in, blowing almost horizontally across the window-pane. He sat his second hour there in a rather forward huddle beside the drawn shade of that window, the sotto-voce comings and goings, all the black-coated parvenus that follow the wake of death, moving about him. A clock shaped like a pilot's wheel, a boyhood property which had marked the time of twenty years, finally chimed the thin, tin stroke of eleven and after a swimming, nebulous interval, twelve. He glanced up each time with his swollen eyes, and then almost automatically out to the wall telephone in the hall opposite the open door. But he did not move. In fact, for two more hours sat there impervious to proffered warmth of word or deed. Meanwhile, the snow behind the drawn shade had turned to rain that beat and washed against the pane.

Just so the iciness that had locked Samuel Lipkind seemed suddenly to melt in a tornado of sobs that swept him, felled him into a prostration of the terrible tears that men weep.

At a training-camp—somewhere—from his side of a tent that had flapped like a captive wing all through a wind-swept night, Lieutenant Lipkind stirred rather painfully for a final snuggle into the crotch of an elbow that was stiff with chill and night damp.

Out over the peaked city that had been pitched rather than built, and on beyond over the frozen stubble of fields, sounded the bugle-cry of the reveille, which shrills so potently:

I can't get 'em up; I can't get 'em up; I can't get 'em up in the morn—ing!



EVEN AS YOU AND I

There is an intensity about September noonday on Coney Island, aided and abetted by tin roofs, metallic facades, gilt domes, looking-glass fronts, jeweled spires, screaming peanut and frankfurter-stands, which has not its peculiar kind of equal this side of opalescent Tangiers. Here the sea air can become a sort of hot camphor-ice to the cheek, the sea itself a percolator, boiling up against a glass surface. Beneath the tin roofs of Ocean Avenue the indoor heat takes on the kind of intense density that is cotton in the mouth and ringing in the ears.

At one o'clock the jibberwock exteriors of Ocean Avenue begin fantastic signs of life. The House of Folly breaks out, over its entire facade, into a chicken-pox of red and green, blue and purple, yellow, violet, and gold electric bulbs. The Ocean Waves concession begins its side-splitting undulations. Maha Mahadra, India's foremost soothsayer (down in police, divorce, and night courts as Mamie Jones, May Costello, and Mabel Brown, respectively), loops back her spangled portiere. The Baby Incubator slides open its ticket-windows. Five carousals begin to whang. A row of hula-hula girls in paper necklaces appears outside of "Hawaii," gelatinously naughty and insinuating of hip. There begins a razzling of the razzle-dazzle. Shooting-galleries begin to snipe into the glittering noon, and the smell of hot spiced sausages and stale malt to lay on the air.

Before the Palace of Freaks, a barker slanted up his megaphone, baying to the sun:

"Y-e-a-o-u! Y-e-a-o-u! The greatest show on the Island! Ten cents to see the greatest freak congress in the world. Shapiro's freaks are gathered from every corner of the universe. Enter and shake hands with Baron de Ross, the children's delight, the world's smallest human being; age, forty-two years, eight months; height, twenty-eight inches; weight, fourteen and one-half pounds, certified scales. Enter and see the original and only authentic Siamese Twins! The Ossified Man! You are cordially invited to stick pins into this mystery of the whole medical world. Jastrow, the world's most famous strong man end glass-eater, will perform his world-startling feats. Show about to begin! Our glass-eater eats glass, not rock candy—any one doubting same can sample it first. We have on view within, and all included in your ten-cents admission, the famous Teenie, absolutely the heaviest woman in captivity. We guarantee Teenie to tip the certified scales at five hundred and fifty-five, a weight unsurpassed by any of the heavyweights in the history of the show business. Come in and fox-trot with Teenie, the world wonder. Come in and fox-trot with her. Show begins immediately. Y-e-a-o-u! Y-e-a-o-u!"

Within the Palace of Freaks, her platform elevated and railed in against the unduly curious, Miss Luella Hoag, all that she was so raucously purported to be, sat back in her chair, as much in the attitude of relaxing as her proportions would permit.

There is no way in which I can hope to salve your offended estheticisms with any of Miss Hoag's better points. What matters it that her skin was not without the rich quality of cream too thick to pour, when her arms fairly dimpled and billowed of this creaminess, and above her rather small ankles her made-to-order red-satin shoes bulged over of it, the low-cut bosom of her red and sequin dress was a terrific expanse of it, her hands small cushions of it, her throat quivery, and her walk a waddle with it. All but her face; it was as if the suet-like inundation of the flesh had not dared here. The chin was only slightly doubled; the cheeks just a shade too plump. Neither was the eye heavy of lid or sunk down behind a ridge of cheek. Between her eyes and upper lip, Miss Hoag looked her just-turned twenty; beyond them, she was antediluvian, deluged, smothered beneath the creamy billows and billows of self.

And yet, sunk there like a flower-seed planted too deeply to push its way up to bloom, the twenty-year-old heart of Miss Hoag beat beneath its carbonaceous layer upon layer, even skipped a beat at spring's palpitating sweetness, dared to dream of love, weep of desire, ache of loneliness and loveliness.

Isolated thus by the flesh, the spirit, too, had been caught in nature's sebaceous trick upon Miss Hoag. Life had passed her by slimly. But Miss Hoag's redundancy was not all literal. A sixth and saving sense of humor lay like a coating of tallow protecting the surface of her. For nature's vagary, she was pensioned on life's pay-roll at eighteen dollars a week.

"Easy money, friends," Miss Hoag would ad lib. to the line-up outside her railing; "how would some of you like to sit back and draw your wages just for the color of your hair or the size of your shoes? You there, that sailor boy down there, how'd you like to have a fox-trot with Teenie? Something to tell the Jackies about. Come on, Jack Tar, I'm light on my feet, but I won't guarantee what I'll be on yours. Step up and have a round."

Usually the crowd would turn sheepish and dissolve at this Terpischorean threat. In fact, it was Miss Hoag's method of accomplishing just that.

In the August high noon of the Coney Island Freak Palace, which is the time and scene of my daring to introduce to you the only under-thirty-years, and over-one-hundred-and-thirty-pounds, heroine in the history of fiction, the megaphone's catch of the day's first dribble of humanity and inhumanity had not yet begun its staring, gaping invasion.

A curtain of heat that was almost tangible hung from the glass roof. The Ossified Man, sworn by clause of contact impervious alike to heat and cold, urged his reclining wheel-chair an imperceptible inch toward the neighboring sway of Miss Hoag's palm-leaf. She widened its arc, subtly.

"Ain't it a fright?" she said.

"Sacred Mother of the Sacred Child!" said the Ossified Man, in a patois of very south Italy.

Then Miss Hoag turned to the right, a rail partitioning her from the highly popular spectacle of the Baron de Ross, christened, married, and to be buried by his nomenclature in disuse, Edwin Ross MacGregor.

"Hot, honey?"

The Baron, in a toy rocker that easily contained him, turned upon Miss Hoag a face so anachronistic that the senses reeled back. An old face, as if carved out of a paleolithic cherry-stone; the years furrowed in; the eyes as if they had seen, without marveling, the light of creation; even the hands, braceleted in what might have been portiere-rings, leanly prehensile. When the Baron spoke, his voice was not unlike the middle C of an old harpsichord whose wires long since had rusted and died. He was frock-coated like a clergyman or a park statue of a patriot.

Of face, a Chaldean sire; of dress, a miniature apotheosis of the tailor's art; of form, a paleolithic child.

"Blow me to a ice-cream cone? Gowann, Teenie, have a heart!"

Miss Hoag billowed into silent laughter. "Little devil! That's six you've sponged off me this week, you little whipper-snapper!"