"Yes, mamma. Wait till I light the gas in your room for you--you'll stumble."

"It's too hot for light; I can see by the Magintys' kitchen light across the air-shaft. What she does in her kitchen so late I don't know--such housekeeping! Yesterday with my own eyes I seen her shake a table-cloth out the window with a hole like my hand in it. She should know what I think of such ways."

Mrs. Ginsburg moved through the gloom, steering carefully round the phantom furniture. From his place on the couch her son could hear her moving about her tiny room adjoining the kitchen. A shoe dropped and, after a satisfying interval, another; the padding of bare feet across a floor; the tink of a china pitcher against its bowl; the slam of a drawer; the rusty squeal of spiral bed-springs under pressure.

"Abie, I'm ready."

When Mr. Ginsburg groped into his mother's room she lay in the casual att.i.tude of sleep, but the yellow patch of light from the shaft fell across her open eyes and gray wisps of hair that lay on her pillow like a sickly aura.

"Good night, Abie. You're a good boy, Abie."

"Good night, mamma. A sheet ain't enough--you got to have the blue-and-white quilt on you, too."

"Don't, Abie--do you want to suffocate me? I can't stand so much. Take off the quilt."

"Your rheumatism, you know, mamma--you'll see how much cooler it will get in the night."

"_Ach_, Abie, leave that window all the way up. So hot, and that boy closes me up like--"

"When the lace curtain blows in it means you're in a draught, mamma--half-way open you can have it, but not all. Without me to fuss you'd have a fine rheumatism--like it ain't dangerous for you to sleep where there's enough draught to blow the curtain in."

"Abie, if you don't feel good, in two minutes I can get up and heat the broth if--"

"I'm grand, mamma. Here, I move this chair so the light from Magintys'

don't shine in your eyes."

"What she does in her kitchen so late I don't know. Good night, Abie. In the dark you look like poor papa. How he used to fuss round the room at night fixing me just like you--poor papa, Abie--not? Poor papa?"

"Good night, mamma."

Mr. Ginsburg leaned over and kissed his mother lightly on the forehead.

"Double cream did you say I should write the milkman?"

"Yes--and, Abie, don't forget to cover the bird."

"Yes. Here, I leave the door half-way open, mamma. Good night."

"Abie! Abie!"

"Yes?"

"Oh, it ain't nothing at all, Abie--never mind."

"I'm right here, mamma. Anything you want me to do?"

"Nothing. Good night, Abie."

"Good night, mamma."

At eight-fifteen Monday morning Miss Ruby Cohn blew into the Ginsburg & Son's shoe store like a breath of thirty-nine-cents-an-ounce perfume shot from a strong-spray atomizer. The street hung with the strong breath of Mayflower a full second after her small, tall-heeled feet had crossed its soft asphalt.

At the first whiff Mr. Ginsburg drew the upper half of his body out from a case of misses' ten-b.u.t.ton welt soles he was unpacking and smiled as if Aurora and spring, and all the heyday misses that Guido Reni and Botticelli loved to paint, had suddenly danced into his shop.

"Well, well, Miss Ruby, are you back?"

Miss Cohn t.i.tillated toward the rear of the store, the tail of a c.o.c.katoo t.i.tillated at a sharp angle from her hat, a patent-leather handbag t.i.tillated from a long cord at her wrist, and a smile iridescent as sunlight on spray played about her lips. She placed her hand blinker-fashion against her mouth as if she would curb the smile.

"Don't tell anybody, Mr. Ginsburg, and I'll whisper you something.

Listen! I ain't back; I'm shooting porcelain ducks off the shelf in a china shop."

"Ah, you're back again with your fun, ain't you? Miss Ruby--believe me--I missed you enough. I bet you had a grand time at the farm!"

Mr. Ginsburg shook hands with her shyly, with a sudden red in his face, and as if her fingers were holy with the dust of a b.u.t.terfly's wings and he feared to brush it off.

"Say, Mr. Ginsburg, you should have seen me! What I think of a shoe-tree after laying all yesterday afternoon under a oak-tree next to a brook that made a noise like playing a tune on wine-gla.s.ses, I'd hate to tell you. Say, you're unpacking them ten-b.u.t.ton welts, ain't you? Good! It ain't too soon for the school stock."

Miss Cohn withdrew two super-long, sapphire-headed hat-pins from her super-small hat, slid out of a tan summer-silk jacket, dallied with the froth of white frills at her throat, ran her fingers through the flame of her hair and turned to Mr. Ginsburg. Her skin was like thick cream and smattered with large, light-brown freckles, which enhanced its creaminess as a crescent of black plaster laid against a lady's cheek makes fairness fairer.

"Well, how's business? I've come back feeling like I could sell storm rubbers to a mermaid."

"You look grand for certain, Miss Ruby. They just can't look any grander'n you. Believe me, I missed you enough! To-day it's cool; but the day before yesterday you can know I was done up when I closed before six."

"Can you beat it? And I was laying flat on the gra.s.s, with ants running up my sleeves and down my neck and wishing for my sealskin--it was so cool. I see Herschey's got cloth-tops in his windows. What's the matter with us springing them patent-tip kids? Say, I got a swell idea for a window comin' home on the train--lookin' at the wheat-fields made me think of it."

"Whatta you know about that? Wheat-fields made her think of a shoe window--like a whip she is--so sharp!"

"It's a yellow season, Mr. Ginsburg; and we can use them old-oak stands and have a tan school window that'll make every plate-gla.s.s front between here and One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street look like a Sixth Avenue slightly worn display."

"Good! You can have just what kind of a window you like, Miss Ruby--just anything you--you like. After such a summer we can afford such a fall window as we want. I see the Busy Bee's got red-paper poppies in theirs--something like that, maybe, with--"

"Nix on paper flowers for us! I got a china-silk idea from a little drummer I met up in the country--one nice little fellow! I wonder if you know him? Simon Leavitt; he says he sold you goods. Simon Leavitt. Know him?"

"No."

"One nice little fellow!"

Silence.

"I missed you lots, Miss Ruby. When Sat.u.r.day came I said to mamma: 'How I miss that girl! Only one month she's been with us, but how I miss that girl!' Oh--eh, Miss Ruby!"

Miss Cohn adjusted a pair of tissue-paper sleevelets and smoothed her smooth tan hips as if she would erase them entirely; then she looked up at him delicately, and for the instant the pink aura of her hair and the rise and fall of her too high bosom gave her some of the fleshly beauty of a Flora.

"Like you had time to think of me! I bet the Washeim girl was in every other day for a pair of--"

"Now, Miss Ruby, you--"