se
string of kisses along it.

"Mamma," he said, kissing them again and again into the palm,
"mamma--mamma!"

"I know, son; it's nerves."

"They eat me, ma. Feel--I'm like ice. I didn't mean it; you know I
didn't mean it."

"My baby," she said, "my wonderful boy, it's like I can never get used
to the wonder of having you! The greatest one of them all should be
mine--a plain woman's like mine!"

He teased her, eager to conciliate and ride down his own state of
quivering.

"Now, ma--now--now--don't forget Rimsky!"

"'Rimsky!' A man three times your age who was playing concerts before
you was born! Is that a comparison? From your clippings-books I can show
Rimsky who the world considers the greatest violinist. Rimsky he rubs
into me!"

"All right then, the press-clippings, but did Elsass, the greatest
manager of them all, bring me a contract for thirty concerts at two
thousand a concert? Now I've got you! Now!"

She would not meet his laughter.

"'Elsass!' Believe me, he'll come to you yet. My boy should worry if he
makes fifty thousand a year more or less. Rimsky should have that
honour--for so long as he can hold it. But he won't hold it long.
Believe me, I don't rest easy in my bed till Elsass comes after you. Not
for so big a contract like Rimsky's, but bigger--not for thirty concerts
but for fifty!"

"_Brava! Brava!_ There's a woman for you. More money than she knows what
to do with, and then not satisfied!"

She was still too tremulous for banter.

"'Not satisfied?' Why, Leon, I never stop praying my thanks for you!"

"All right then," he cried, laying his icy fingers on her cheek;
"to-morrow we'll call a _Mignon_--a regular old-fashioned Allen Street
prayer-party!"

"Leon, you mustn't make fun."

"Make fun of the sweetest girl in this room?"

"'Girl!' Ah, if I could only hold you by me this way, Leon! Always a
boy--with me--your poor old mother--your only girl. That's a fear I
suffer with, Leon--to lose you to a--girl! That's how selfish the mother
of such a wonder-child like mine can get to be."

"All right. Trying to get me married off again. Nice! Fine!"

"Is it any wonder I suffer, son? Twenty-one years to have kept you by me
a child. A boy that's never in his life was out after midnight except to
catch trains. A boy that never has so much as looked at a girl and could
have looked at princesses. To have kept you all these years--mine--is it
any wonder, son, I never stop praying my than