o perfect row of badly executed
teeth showed their pink rubber gums, leaned over the delicate lid of the
pie, and with a three-pronged fork pricked out the doughy
inscription--ABE. Sarah baking cakes for Abraham's prophetic visitors
had no more gracious zeal.

The waiting oven filled the kitchen with its gassy breath; a train
hurtled by and rattled the chandeliers, a stack of plates on a shelf,
and a blue-glass vase on the parlor mantel. A buzz-bell rang three
staccato times. Mrs. Ginsburg placed the pie on the table-edge and
hurried down a black aisle of hallway.

Book-agents, harbingers of a
dozen-cabinet-photographs-colored-crayon-thrown-in, and their kin have
all combined to make wary the gentle cliff-dweller. Mrs. Ginsburg opened
her door just wide enough to insert a narrow pencil, placed the tip of
her shoe in the aperture, and leaned her face against the jamb so that
from without half an eye burned through the crack.

"Abie? It ain't you, is it, Abie?"

"Don't get excited, mamma!"

"It ain't six o'clock yet, Abie--something ain't right with you!"

"Don't get excited, mamma! I just closed early for the heat. For what
should I keep open when a patent-leather shoe burns a hole in your
hand?"

"_Ach_, such a scare as you give me! If I'd 'a' known it I could have
had supper ready. It wouldn't hurt you to call up-stairs when you close
early--no consideration that boy has got for his mother! Poor papa! If
he so much as closed the store ten minutes earlier he used to call up
for me to heat the things--no consideration that boy has got for his old
mother!"

Mr. Ginsburg placed a heavy hand on each of his mother's shoulders and
kissed her while the words were unfinished and smoking on her lips.

"It's too hot to eat, mamma. Ain't I asked you every night during this
heat not to cook so much?"

"Just the same, when it comes to the table I see you eat. I never see
you refuse nothing--I bet you come twice for apple-pie to-night. Is the
hall table the place for your cuffs, Abie? I'm ashamed for the people
the way my house looks when you're home--no order that boy has got! I go
now and put my pie in the oven."

"I ain't hungry, mamma--honest! Don't fix no supper for me--I go in the
front room and lay down for a while. Never have I known such heat as I
had it in the store to-day--and with Miss Ruby gone it was bad enough, I
can tell you."

Mrs. Ginsburg reached up suddenly and turned high a tiny bead of
gas-light