"I wonder if Annie left out the note for Mrs. Suss's extra milk!"

"Don't get up, dearie; it's only five--"

"Right away, baby, with extra towels I must run up to Miss Flora's room.

That six o'clock-train for Trenton she gets."

"Ma dear, let me go."

"Lay right where you are! I guess you want you should look all worn out when a certain young man what I know walks down to meet our train at Atlantic City this afternoon, eh?"

"Oh, mommy, mommy!" And Ruby lay back against the luxury of pillows.

At eleven the morning rose to its climax--the butcher, the baker, and every sort of maker hustling in and out the bas.e.m.e.ntway; the sweeping of upstairs halls; windows flung open and lace curtains looped high; the smell of spring pouring in even from asphalt; sounds of scrubbing from various stoops; shouts of drivers from a narrow street wedged with its Sat.u.r.day-morning blockade of delivery wagons, and a crosstown line of motor-cars, tops back and nosing for the speedway of upper Broadway. A homely bouquet of odors rose from the bas.e.m.e.nt kitchen, drifting up through the halls, the smell of mutton bubbling as it stewed.

After a morning of up-stairs and down-stairs and in and out of chambers, Mrs. Kaufman, enveloped in a long-sleeved ap.r.o.n still angular with starch, hung up the telephone receiver in the hall just beneath the staircase and entered her bedroom, sitting down rather heavily beside the open shelf of her desk. A long envelope lay uppermost on that desk, and she took it up slowly, blinking her eyes shut and holding them squeezed tight as if she would press back a vision, even then a tear oozing through. She blinked it back, but her mouth was wry with the taste of tears.

A slatternly maid poked her head in through the open door. "Mrs. Katz broke 'er mug!"

"Take the one off Mr. Krakow's wash-stand and give it to her, Tillie."

She was crying now frankly, and when the door swung closed, even though it swung back again on its insufficient hinge, she let her head fall forward into the pillow of her arms, the curve of her back rising and falling.

But after a while the greengrocer came on his monthly mission, in his white ap.r.o.n and shirt-sleeves, and she compared stubs with him from a file on her desk and balanced her account with careful squinted glance and a keen eye for an overcharge on a cut of breakfast bacon.

On the very heels of him, so that they met and danced to pa.s.s each other in the doorway, Mr. Vetsburg entered, with an overcoat flung across his right arm and his left sagging to a small black traveling-bag.

"Well," he said, standing in the frame of the open door, his derby well back on his head and regarding her there beside the small desk, "is this what you call ready at twelve?"

She rose and moved forward in her crackly starched ap.r.o.n. "I--Please, Mr.

Vetsburg, it ain't right, I know!"

"You don't mean you're not going!" he exclaimed, the lifted quality immediately dropping from his voice.

"You--you got to excuse me again, Mr. Vetsburg. It ain't no use I should try to get away on Sat.u.r.days, much less Easter Sat.u.r.day."

"Well, of all things!"

"Right away, the last minute, Mr. Vetsburg, right one things after another."

He let his bag slip to the floor.

"Maybe, Mrs. Kaufman," he said, "it ain't none of my business, but ain't it a shame a good business woman like you should let herself always be tied down to such a house like she was married to it?"

"But--"

"Can't get away on Sat.u.r.days, just like it ain't the same any other day in the week, I ask you! Sat.u.r.day you blame it on yet!"

She lifted the ap.r.o.n from her hem, her voice hurrying. "You can see for yourself, Mr. Vetsburg, how in my brown silk all ready I was. Even--even Ruby don't know yet I don't go. Down by Gimp's I sent her she should buy herself one of them red straw hats is the fad with the girls now. She meets us down by the station."

"That's a fine come-off, ain't it, to disappoint--"

"At the last minute, Mr. Vetsburg, how things can happen. Out of a clear sky Mrs. Finshriber has to-morrow for Easter dinner that skin doctor, Abrams, and his wife she's so particular about. And Annie with her sore ankle and--"

"A little shyster doctor like Abrams with his advertis.e.m.e.nts all over the newspapers should sponge off you and your holiday! By golly! Mrs. Kaufman, just like Ruby says, how you let a whole houseful of old hens rule this roost it's a shame!"

"When you go down to station, Mr. Vetsburg, so right away she ain't so disappointed I don't come, tell her maybe to-morrow I--."

"I don't tell her nothing!" broke in Mr. Vetsburg and moved toward her with considerable strengthening of tone. "Mrs. Kaufman, I ask you, do you think it right you should go back like this on Ruby and me, just when we want most you should--"

At that she quickened and fluttered. "Ruby and you! Ach, it's a old saying, Mr. Vetsburg, like the twig is bent so the tree grows. That child won't be so surprised her mother changes her mind. Just so changeable as her mother, and more, is Ruby herself. With that girl, Mr. Vetsburg, it's--it's hard to know what she does one minute from the next. I always say no man--n.o.body can ever count on a little harum-scarum like--like she is."

He took up her hat, a small turban of breast feathers, laid out on the table beside him, and advanced with it clumsily enough. "Come," he said, "please now, Mrs. Kaufman. Please."

"I--"

"I--I got plans made for us to-morrow down by the sh.o.r.e that's--that's just fine! Come now, Mrs. Kaufman."

"Please, Mr. Vetsburg, don't force. I--I can't! I always say n.o.body can ever count on such a little harum-scarum as--"

"You mean to tell me, Mrs. Kaufman, that just because a little shyster doctor--"

Her hand closed over the long envelope again, crunching it. "No, no, that--that ain't all, Mr. Vetsburg. Only I don't want you should tell Ruby.

You promise me? How that child worries over little things. Shulif from the agency called up just now. He don't give me one more minute as two this afternoon I--I should sign. How I been putting them off so many weeks with this lease it's a shame. Always you know how in the back of my head I've had it to take maybe a smaller place when this lease was done, but, like I say, talk is cheap and moving ain't so easy done--ain't it? If he puts in new plumbing in the pantry and new hinges on the doors and papers my second floor and Mrs. Suss's alcove, like I said last night, after all I could do worse as stay here another five year--ain't it, Mr. Vetsburg?"

"I--"

"A house what keeps filled so easy, and such a location, with the Subway less as two blocks. I--So you see, Mr. Vetsburg, if I don't want I come back and find my house on the market, maybe rented over my head, I got to stay home for Shulif when he comes to-day."

A rush of dark blood had surged up into Mr. Vetsburg's face, and he twiddled his hat, his dry fingers moving around inside the brim.

"Mrs. Kaufman," he cried--"Mrs. Kaufman, sometimes when for years a man don't speak out his mind, sometimes he busts all of a sudden right out.

I--Oh--e-e-e!" and, immediately and thickly inarticulate, made a tremendous feint at clearing his throat, tossed up his hat and caught it; rolled his eyes.

"Mr. Vetsburg?"

"A man, Mrs. Kaufman, can bust!"

"Bust?"

He was still violently dark, but swallowing with less labor. "Yes, from holding in. Mrs. Kaufman, should a woman like you--the finest woman in the world, and I can prove it--a woman, Mrs. Kaufman, who in her heart and my heart and--Should such a woman not come to Atlantic City when I got everything fixed like a stage set!"

She threw out an arm that was visibly trembling. "Mr. Vetsburg, for G.o.d's sake, 'ain't I just told you how that she--harum-scarum--she--."

"Will you, Mrs. Kaufman, come or won't you? Will you, I ask you, or won't you?"

"I--I can't, Mr.--"

"All right, then, I--I bust out now. To-day can be as good as to-morrow!

Not with my say in a t'ousand years, Mrs. Kaufman, you sign that lease! I ain't a young man any more with fine speeches, Mrs. Kaufman, but not in a t'ousand years you sign that lease."