uld have seen the spread Jeanette had, mamma! I brought
home the recipe for her lobster chops. I'll bet if she had one she had
six different kinds of ice-cream."

With one swoop Mrs. Katzenstein flung the snowy avalanche of pillows and
sheets over the footboard of the bed and opened wide both the windows.

"Tillie," she cried, "bring me the broom. I'll start in Miss Birdie's
room while you finish the breakfast dishes."

"Such an affair as she had! I said to Marcus, on the way home, it could
have been at Delmonico's and not have been finer."

"You don't say so! Such is life, ain't it? We knew Simon Lefkowitz when
he used to come to papa and buy for his stock six shirt-waists at a
time. Then they didn't live in no eighty-dollar apartment. Many's the
morning I used to meet the old lady at market. Who else was there?"

"Who? Let me see! Gertie Glauber was there. She had on that dress
Laevitt made; and, believe me, I liked mine better. Tekla Stein and
Morris Adler--you know those Adlers in the millinery business?"

"Nice people!"

"You couldn't get a pin between Tekla and him--honest, how that girl
worked for him! Selma Blumenthal was there, too, and I must say she
looked grand--those eyes of hers and that figure! But what those fellows
can see in her so much I don't know. Honest, mamma, she's such a
dumbhead she can't talk ten words to a boy."

"Girls don't need so much brains. I always say it scares the men off.
Look at Gussie Graudenheimer--high school she had to have yet! What good
does it do? Not a thing does that girl have--and her mother worries
enough about it, too."

"That's what Marcus says about her--he says she's too smart for him; he
says he'd rather have a girl nice and sweet than too smart."

Mrs. Katzenstein leaned her broom in a corner, daubed at the mantelpiece
with a flannel cloth, and regarded her daughter surreptitiously through
the mirror.

"You had a nice time with Marcus last night? You've been out with him
five times and still have nothing to say."

"What's there to say, mamma? He's a fine boy and shows a girl a grand
time. Last night it was sleeting just a little, and he had to have a
taxi-cab. Honest, it was a shame for the money! Take it from me, Morris
Adler walked Tekla. I saw them going to the Subway."

"Well, what's what? Is that the end of it?"

"Aw, mamma, how should I know? I can't read a fellow's mind! All I know
is he--he's coming over to-night."

"Don't you bother with