She did not return the glance, but caught her cheeks in the vise of her
hands as if to stem the too quick flush. "Now you--you quit!" she cried,
flashing her back upon him in quick pink confusion.

"She gets mad yet," he said, his shoulders rising and falling in silent
laughter.

"Don't!"

"Well," he said, clicking the door softly after him, "good night and sleep
tight."

"'Night, Vetsy."

Upon the click of that door Mrs. Kaufman leaned softly forward in her
chair, speaking through a scratch in her throat. "Ruby!"

With her flush still high, Miss Kaufman danced over toward her parent, then
as suddenly ebbed in spirit, the color going. "Why, mommy, what--what you
crying for, dearie? Why, there's nothing to cry for, dearie, that we're
going off on a toot to-morrow. Honest, dearie, like Vetsy says, you're all
nerves. I bet from the way Suss hollered at you to-day about her extra milk
you're upset yet. Wouldn't I give her a piece of my mind, though! Here,
move your chair, mommy, and let me pull down the bed."

"I--I'm all right, baby. Only I just tell you it's enough to make anybody
cry we should have a friend like we got in Vetsburg. I--I tell you, baby,
they just don't come better than him. Not, baby? Don't be ashamed to say so
to mama."

"I ain't, mama! And, honest, his--his whole family is just that way.
Sweet-like and generous. Wait till you see the way his sister and
brother-in-law will treat us at the hotel to-morrow. And--and Leo, too."

"I always say the day what Meyer Vetsburg, when he was only a clerk in the
firm, answered my furnished-room advertisement was the luckiest day in my
life."

"You ought to heard, ma. I was teasing him the other day, telling him that
he ought to live at the Savoy, now that he's a two-thirds member of the
firm."

"Ruby!"

"I was only teasing, ma. You just ought to seen his face. Any day he'd
leave us!"

Mrs. Kaufman placed a warm, insinuating arm around her daughter's slim
waist, drawing her around the chair-side and to her. "There's only one way,
baby, Meyer Vetsburg can ever leave me and make me happy when he leaves."

"Ma, what you mean?"

"You know, baby, without mama coming right out in words."

"Ma, honest I don't. What?"

"You see it coming just like I do. Don't fool mama, baby."

The slender lines of Miss Kaufman's waist stiffened, and she half slipped
from the embrace.

"Now, now, baby, is it wrong a mother should talk to her own baby about
what is cl