Insidious darkness crept into the room like a cool hand descending on the feverish brow of day; the red glow shifted farther along the mantel and lay vivid as blood across the blue vase and the photograph of a grizzled head in a seash.e.l.l frame. Mrs. Ginsburg rocked over a loose board in the floor and waved a palm-leaf fan toward the reclining shadow of her son until he could taste its tape-bound edge.

"Next week to-night five years since we lost poor papa, Abie--five years! _Gott!_ When I think of it! Just like his picture he looked up to the last, too--just like his picture."

"Yes, mamma."

"I ain't so spry as I used to be, neither, Abie--or, believe me, I would never let you take on a clerk. Sometimes I think, when the rheumatism gets up round my heart, it won't be long as I go too. Poor papa! If I could have gone with him! How he always hated to go alone to places! To the barber he hated to go, till I got so I could cut it myself."

"Mamma, you ain't got nothing to worry about."

"I worry enough."

"You can take it as easy as you want to now--I even want we should have a better apartment. We got the best little business between here and One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street! If poor papa could see it now he wouldn't know it from five years ago. Poor papa! He wasn't willing to spend on improvements."

"Papa always said you had a good business head on you, Abie; but I ain't one, neither, for funny businesses like a clerk. And what you needed them new gla.s.s shoe-stands for when the old ones--"

"Now, mamma, don't begin on that again."

"When I was down in the store papa used to say to me: 'Wait till Abie's grown up, mamma! By how his ears stand out from his head I can tell he's got good business sense.' And to think that so little of you he had in the store--such a man that deserved the best of everything! He had to die just when things might have got easy for him."

"Don't cry, mamma; everything is for the best."

"You're a good boy, Abie. Sometimes I think I stand in your way enough."

"Such talk!"

"Any girl would do well enough for herself to get you. Believe me, Beulah Washeim don't need a new pair of shoes every two weeks for nothing! Her mother thinks I don't notice it--she's always braggin' to me how hard her Beulah is on shoes and what a good customer she makes."

"Beulah Washeim! I don't even know what last she wears--that's how much I think of Beulah Washeim."

"Don't let me stand in your way, Abie. Ain't I often told you, now since you do a grand business and we're all paid up, don't let your old mother stand in your way?"

"Like you could be in my way!"

"Once I said to poor papa, the night we paid the mortgage off and had wine for supper: 'Papa,' I said, 'we're out of debt now--_Gott sei Dank!_--except one debt we owe to some girl when Abie grows up; and that debt we got to pay with money that won't come from work and struggle and saving; we got to pay that debt with our boy--with _blood-money_.' Poor papa! Already he was asleep when I said it--half a gla.s.s of wine, and he was mussy-headed."

"Yes, yes, mamma."

"A girl like Beulah Washeim I ain't got so much use for neither--with her silk petticoats and silk stockings; but Sol Washeim's got a grand business there, Abie. They don't move in a nine-room house from a four-room apartment for nothing."

"For Beulah's weight in gold I don't want her--the way she looks at me with her eyes and shoots 'em round like I was a three-ringed circus."

"You're right--for money you shouldn't marry neither; only I always say it's just as easy to fall in love with a rich one as a poor one. But I'm the last one to force you. There's Hannah Rosenblatt--a grand, economical girl!"

"Hannah Rosenblatt--a girl that teaches school, she pushes on me. I got to get educated yet!"

Mrs. Ginsburg rocked and fanned rhythmically; her unsubtle lips curled upward with the subtle smile of a zingaro. The placidity of peace on a mountain-top, shade in a dell, and love in a garden crept into her tones.

"I just want you to know I don't stand in your way, Abie. You ain't a child no more; but while I'm here you got so good a home as you want--not?"

"Sure!"

"Girls you can always get--not? Girls nowadays ain't what they used to be neither. I'd like to see a girl do to-day for papa what I did--how I was in the store and kitchen all at once; then we didn't have no satin-shoe clerks! Girls ain't what they used to be; in my day working-girls had no time for fine-smelling cologne-water and--"

"All girls ain't alike, mamma--satin shoes cost no more nowadays as leather. We got a dollar-ninety-eight satin pump, you wouldn't believe it--and such a seller! All girls ain't alike, mamma."

"What you mean, Abie?"

Mr. Ginsburg turned on the couch so that his face was close to the wall, and his voice half lost in the curve of his arm.

"Well, once in a while you come across a girl that ain't--ain't like the rest of 'em. Well, there ought to be girls that ain't like the rest of 'em, oughtn't there?"

Mrs. Ginsburg's rocking and fanning slowed down a bit; a curious moment fell over the little room; a nerve-tingling quiescence that in its pregnant moment can race the mind back over an eternity--a silence that is cold with sweat, like the second when a doctor removes his stethoscope from over a patient's left breast and looks at him with a film of pity glazing his eyes.

"What you mean, Abie? Tell mamma what you mean. I ain't the one to stand in your light." Mrs. Ginsburg's speech clogged in her throat.

"You know you always got a home with me, mamma. You know, no matter what comes, I always got to tuck you in bed at night and fix the windows for you. You know you always got with me the best kind of a home I got to give you. Ain't it?"

His hand crept out and rested lightly--ever so lightly--on his mother's knee.

"Abie, you never talked like this before--I won't stand in your way, Abie. If you can make up your mind, Beulah Washeim or Hannah Rosenblatt, either would be--"

"Aw, mamma, it ain't them."

Mrs. Ginsburg's hand closed tightly over her son's; a train swooped past and created a flurry of warm breeze in the room.

"Who--is--it, Abie? Don't be afraid to tell mamma."

"Why, mamma, it ain't no one! Can't a fellow just talk? You started it, didn't you? I was just talking 'cause you was."

"He scares me yet! No consideration that boy has got for his mother!

Abie, a little broth--you ain't got no fever, Abie--your head is cool like ice."

"You ain't had no supper yet, mamma."

"I had coffee at five o'clock; for myself I never worry. I'm glad enough you feel all right. It's eight o'clock, Abie--I go me to bed. To-morrow I go to market with Yetta."

"Aw, mamma, now why for do you--"

"I ain't too proud--such high-toned notions I ain't got. For what I pay forty-two cents for eggs up here when I can get 'em for thirty-eight?"

"Be careful, mamma; don't fall over the chair--you want a light?"

"No. Write me a note for the milkman, Abie, before you go to bed, and leave it out with the bottles--half a pint of double cream I want. I make you cream-potatoes for supper to-morrow. I laid your blue shirt on your bed, Abie--don't go to bed on it. It's the last time I iron it; but once more you can wear it, then I make dust-rags. I ironed it soft like you like."

"Yes, mamma."

"Put the cover on the canary, too, Abie. That night you went to the lodge he chirped and chirped, just like you was lost and he was crying 'cause me and him was lonely."