er
house, and they were successful in spite of Ma Mandle's steady efforts
to block them. Old lady Mandle did not mean to be cruel. She only
thought that she was protecting her son's interests. She did not know
that the wise men had a definite name for the mental processes which
caused her, perversely, to do just the thing which she knew she should
not do.

Hugo and Lil went out a great deal in the evening. They liked the
theatre, restaurant life, gayety. Hugo learned to dance and became
marvellously expert at it, as does your fat man.

"Come on and go out with us this evening, Mother," Lil would say.

"Sure!" Hugo would agree, heartily. "Come along, Ma. We'll show you some
night life."

"I don't want to go," Ma Mandle would mutter. "I'm better off at home.
You enjoy yourself better without an old woman dragging along."

That being true, they vowed it was not, and renewed their urging. In the
end she went, grudgingly. But her old eyes would droop; the late supper
would disagree with her; the noise, the music, the laughter, and shrill
talk bewildered her. She did not understand the banter, and resented
it.

Next day, in the park, she would boast of her life of gayety to the
vaguely suspicious three.

Later she refused to go out with them. She stayed in her room a good
deal, fussing about, arranging bureau drawers already geometrically
precise, winding endless old ribbons, ripping the trimming off hats long
passe and re-trimming them with odds and ends and scraps of feathers and
flowers.

Hugo and Lil used to ask her to go with them to the movies, but they
liked the second show at eight-thirty while she preferred the earlier
one at seven. She grew sleepy early, though she often lay awake for
hours after composing herself for sleep. She would watch the picture
absorbedly, but when she stepped, blinking, into the bright glare of
Fifty-third Street, she always had a sense of let-down, of depression.

A wise old lady of seventy, who could not apply her wisdom for her own
good. A rather lonely old lady, with hardening arteries and a dilating
heart. An increasingly fault-finding old lady. Even Hugo began to notice
it. She would wait for him to come home and then, motioning him
mysteriously into her own room, would pour a tale of fancied insult into
his ear.

"I ran a household and brought up a family before she was born. I don't
have to be told what's what. I may be an old woman but I'm not so old
that I can sit an