osest in both their hearts?"

"I--I--mama, I--I don't know!"

"How he's here in this room every night lately, Ruby, since you--you're a
young lady. How right away he follows us up-stairs. How lately he invited
you every month down at Atlantic City. Baby, you ain't blind, are you?"

"Why, mama--why, mama, what is Meyer Vetsburg to--to me? Why, he--he's got
gray hair, ma; he--he's getting bald. Why, he--he don't know I'm on earth.
He--he's--"

"You mean, baby, he don't know anybody else is on earth. What's, nowadays,
baby, a man forty? Why--why, ain't mama forty-one, baby, and didn't you
just say yourself for sisters they take us?"

"I know, ma, but he--he--. Why, he's got an accent, ma, just like old man
Katz and--and all of 'em. He says 'too-sand' for thousand. He--"

"Baby, ain't you ashamed like it makes any difference how a good man
talks?" She reached out, drawing her daughter by the wrists down into her
lap. "You're a bad little flirt, baby, what pretends she don't know what a
blind man can see."

Miss Kaufman's eyes widened, darkened, and she tugged for the freedom of
her wrists. "Ma, quit scaring me!"

"Scaring you! That such a rising man like Vetsburg, with a business he
worked himself into president from clerk, looks every day more like he's
falling in love with you, should scare you!"

"Ma, not--not him!"

In reply she fell to stroking the smooth black plaits, wound coronet
fashion about Miss Kaufman's small head. Large, hot tears sprang to her
eyes. "Baby, when you talk like that it's you that scares mama!"

"He--he--"

"Why, you think, Ruby, I been making out of myself a servant like you call
it all these years except for your future? For myself a smaller house
without such a show and maybe five or six roomers without meals, you think
ain't easier as this big barn? For what, baby, you think I always want you
should have extravagances maybe I can't afford and should keep up with the
fine girls what you meet down by Atlantic City if it ain't that a man like
Meyer Vetsburg can be proud to choose you from the best?"

"Mama! mama!"

"Don't think, Ruby, when the day comes what I can give up this
white-elephant house that it won't be a happy one for me. Every night when
I hear from up-stairs how Mrs. Katz and all of them hollers down 'towels'
and 'ice-water' to me like I--I was their slave, don't think, baby, I won't
be happiest woman in this world the day what I can slam the door, bang,
right on t