terribly disturbed. "About mother--you said--"

"You and she ought to go away this winter--not just for a trip, but to
stay. You"--she drew a long breath and made the plunge--"you ought to
give up the house."

"Give up--"

"Permanently. Mother and you are buried alive here. You ought to come to
New York to live. Both of you will love it when you are there for a few
days. I don't mean to come to a hotel. I mean to take a little
apartment, a furnished apartment at first to see how you like it--two
rooms and kitchenette, like a play-house."

Hosey Brewster looked down at his own big bulk. Then around the great
furnace room. "Oh, but listen--"

"No, I want you to listen first. Mother's worn out, I tell you. It isn't
as if she were the old-fashioned kind; she isn't. She loves the
theatres, and pretty hats, and shoes with buckles, and lobster, and
concerts."

He broke in again: "Sure; she likes 'em for change. But for a steady
diet--Besides, I've got a business to 'tend to. My gosh! I've got a
business to--"

"You know perfectly well that Wetzler practically runs the whole
thing--or could, if you'd let him." Youth is cruel like that, when it
wants its way.

He did not even deny it. He seemed suddenly old. Pinky's heart smote her
a little. "It's just that you've got so used to this great barracks you
don't know how unhappy it's making you. Why, mother said to-day that she
hated it. I asked about the attic--the cleaning and all--and she said
that she hated it."

"Did she say that, Paula?"

"Yes."

He dusted his hands together, slowly, spiritlessly. His eyes looked
pained and dull. "She did, h'm? You say she did?" He was talking to
himself, and thinking, thinking.

Pinky, sensing victory, left him. She ran lightly up the cellar stairs,
through the first-floor rooms and up to the second floor. Her mother's
bedroom door was open.

A little mauve lamp shed its glow upon the tired woman in one of the
plump, grey-enamel beds. "No, I'm not sleeping. Come here, dear. What in
the world have you been doing in the cellar all this time?"

"Talking to dad." She came over and perched herself on the side of the
bed. She looked down at her mother. Then she bent and kissed her. Mrs.
Brewster looked incredibly girlish with the lamp's rosy glow on her face
and her hair, warmly brown and profuse, rippling out over the pillow.
Scarcely a thread of grey in it. "You know, mother, I think dad isn't
well. He ought to go away."