"It's like Izzy says, Julius: there's too many fine goils in the city for the boys to come out here on a forty-five-minute ride. What boys has she got out here, Mike Donnely and--"

"_Ach!_"

"That's what we need; just something like that should happen to us. But, believe me, it's happened before when a girl ain't got no better to pick from. How I worry about it you should know."

"Becky, with even such talk you make me sick."

"Mark my word, it's happened before, Julius! That's why I say, Julius, a few months in the city this winter and she could meet the right young man. Take a boy like Max Teitlebaum. Yourself you said how grand and steady he is. Twice with Izzy he's been out here, and not once his eyes off Poil did he take."

"Teitlebaum, with a store twice so big as ours on Sixth Avenue, don't need to look for us--twice they can buy and sell us."

"Is--that--so! To me that makes not one difference. Put Poil in the city, where it don't take an hour to get to be, and, _ach_, almost anything could happen! Not once did he take his eyes off her--such a grand, quiet boy, too."

"When a young man's got thoughts, forty-five minutes' street-car ride don't keep him away."

"Nonsense! I always say I never feel hungry till I see in front of me a good meal. If I have to get dressed and go out and market for it I don't want it. It's the same with marriage. You got to work up in the young man the appet.i.te. What they don't see they don't get hungry for. They got to get eyes bigger as their stomachs first."

"Such talk makes me sick. Suppose she don't get married, ain't she got a good home and--"

"An old maid you want yet! A beau-ti-fool goil like our Poil he wants to make out of her an old maid, or she should break her parents' hearts with a match like Mike Donnely--"

"Becky."

"Aw, Julius, now we got the chance to rent for three months. Say we live them three months at the Wellington Hotel. Say it costs us a little more; everybody always says what a grand provider you are, Julius; let them say a little more, Julius."

"I--I ain't got the money, Becky, I tell you. For me to refuse what you want is like I stick a knife in my heart, but I got poor business, Becky."

"Maybe in the end, Julius, it's the cheapest thing we ever done."

"I can't afford it, Becky."

"For only three months we can go, Julius."

"I got notes, Becky, notes already twice extended. If I don't meet in March G.o.d knows where--"

"Ya, ya, Julius; all that talk I know by heart!"

"I ain't getting no younger neither, Becky. Hardly through the insurance examination I could get. I ain't so strong no more. When I get big worries I don't sleep so good. I ain't so well nights, Becky."

"Always the imagination sickness, Julius."

"I ain't so well, I tell you, Becky."

"Last time when all you had was the neuralgia, and you came home from the store like you was dying, Dr. Ellenburg told me hisself right here on this porch that never did he know a man so nervous of dying like you."

"I can't help it, Becky."

"If I was so afraid like you of dying, Julius, not one meal could I enjoy. A healthy man like you with nothing but the rheumatism and a little asthma. Only last week you came home pale like a ghost with a pain in your side, when it wasn't nothing but where your pipe burnt a hole in your pants pocket to give me some more mending to do."

"Just for five minutes you should have felt that pain!"

"Honest, Julius, to be a coward like you for dying it ain't nice--honest, it ain't."

"Always, Becky, when I think I ain't always going to be with you and the children such a feeling comes over me."

"_Ach_, Julius, be quiet! Without you I might just as well be dead, too."

"I'm getting old, Becky; sixty-six ain't no spring chicken no more."

"That's right, Julius; stick knives in me."

"Life is short, Becky; we must be happy while we got each other."

"Life _is_ short, Julius, and for our children we should do all what we can. We can't always be with them, Julius. We--we must do the right thing by 'em. Like you say we--we're getting old--together, Julius. We don't want nothing to reproach ourselves with."

"Ya, ya, Becky."

Darkness fell thickly, like blue velvet portieres swinging together, and stars sprang out in a clear sky.

They rocked in silence, their heads touching. The gray cat, with eyes like opals, sprang into the hollow of Mr. Binsw.a.n.ger's arm.

"Billy, you come to sit by mamma and me? Ni-ce Bil-ly!"

"We go in now, papa; in the damp you get rheumatism."

"Ya, ya, Becky--hear how he purrs, like an engine."

"Come on, papa; damper every minute it gets."

He rose with his rheumatic jerkiness, placed the cat gently on all fours on the floor, and closed his fingers around the curve of his wife's outstretched arm.

"When--when we go--go to the city, Becky, we don't sublet Billy; we--we take him with us, not, Becky?"

"Yes, papa."

"Ya, ya, Becky."

The chief sponsors for the family hotel are neurasthenia and bridge whist, the inability of the homemaker and the debility of the housekeeper.

Under these invasions Hestia turns out the gas-logs, pastes a To Let sign on the windows, locks the front door behind her, and gives the key to the auctioneer.

The family holds out the dining-room clock and a pair of silver candlesticks that came over on the stupendously huge cargo which time and curio dealers have piled upon the good ship _Mayflower_; engages a three-room suite on the ninth floor of a European-plan hotel, and inaugurates upon the sly American paradox of housekeeping in non-housekeeping apartments.

The Wellington Hotel was a rococo haven for such refugees from the modern social choler, and its doors flew open and offered them a family rate, excellent cuisine, quarantine.

Excellent cuisine, however, is a clever but spiceless parody on home cookery.