late
handkerchief. When he came in at the end of a hard day downtown--hot,
fagged, sticky--she saw to it that the bathroom was his own for an hour
so that he could bathe, shave, powder, dress, and emerge refreshed to
eat his good dinner in comfort. Lil was always waiting for him cool,
interested, sweet-smelling.

When she said, "How's business, lover?" she really wanted to know. More
than that, when he told her she understood, having herself been so long
in the game. She gave him shrewd advice, too, so shrewdly administered
that he never realized he had been advised, and so, man-like, could
never resent it.

Ma Mandle's reign was over.

To Mrs. Lamb, Mrs. Brunswick, and Mrs. Wormser Ma Mandle lied
magnificently. Their eager, merciless questions pierced her like knives,
but she made placid answer: "Young folks are young folks. They do things
different. I got my way. My son's wife has got hers." Their quick ears
caught the familiar phrase.

"It's hard, just the same," Mrs. Wormser insisted, "after you've been
boss all these years to have somebody else step in and shove you out of
the way. Don't I know!"

"I'm glad to have a little rest. Marketing and housekeeping nowadays is
no snap, with the prices what they are. Anybody that wants the pleasure
is welcome."

But they knew, the three. There was, in Ma Mandle's tone, a hollow
pretence that deceived no one. They knew, and she knew that they knew.
She was even as they were, a drinker of the hemlock cup, an eater of
ashes.

Hugo Mandle was happier and more comfortable than he had ever been in
his life. It wasn't merely his love for Lil, and her love for him that
made him happy. Lil set a good table, though perhaps it was not as
bounteous as his mother's had been. His food, somehow, seemed to agree
with him better than it used to. It was because Lil selected her
provisions with an eye to their building value, and to Hugo's figure.
She told him he was getting too fat, and showed him where, and Hugo
agreed with her and took off twenty-five burdensome pounds, but Ma
Mandle fought every ounce of it.

"You'll weaken yourself, Hugo! Eat! How can a man work and not eat? I
never heard of such a thing. Fads!"

But these were purely physical things. It was a certain mental
relaxation that Hugo enjoyed, though he did not definitely know it. He
only knew that Lil seemed, somehow, to understand. For years his mother
had trailed after him, putting away things that he wanted lef