--it flared for a moment like a ragged-edged fan and then
settled into a sooty flare. In its low-candle-power light their faces
were far away and without outline--like shadows seen through the mirage
of a dream.

"Abie--tell mamma--you ain't sick, are you? Abie, you look pale."

"Now, mamma, begin to worry about nothing when--"

"It ain't like you to come up early, heat or no heat. _Ach!_ I should
have known when he comes up-stairs early it means something. What hurts
you, Abie? That's what I need yet, a sickness! What hurts you, Abie?"

"Mamma, the way you go on it's enough to make me sick if I ain't. Can't
a boy come up-stairs just because--"

"I know you like a book; when you close the store and lay down before
supper there's something wrong. Tell me, Abie--"

"All right, then! You know it so well I can't tell you nothing--all I
got is a little tiredness from the heat."

"Go in and lay down. Can't you tell mamma what hurts you, Abie? Are you
afraid it would give me a little pleasure if you tell me? No
consideration that boy has got for his mother!"

"Honest, mamma, ain't I told you three times I ain't nothing but tired?"

"He snaps me up yet like he was a turtle and me his worst enemy! For
what should I worry myself? For my part, I don't care. I only say, Abie,
if there's anything hurts you--you know how poor papa started to
complain just one night like this how he fussed at me when I wanted the
doctor. If there's anything hurts you--"

"There ain't, mamma."

"Come in and let me fix the sofa for you. I only say when you close the
store early there's something wrong. That Miss Ruby should go off
yet--vacation she has to have--a girl like that, with her satin shoes
and all--comes into the store at nine o'clock 'cause she runs to the
picture shows all night! Yetta Washeim seen her. Vacation yet she has to
have! Twenty years I spent with poor papa in the store, and no vacation
did I have. Lay down, Abie."

"All right, then," said Mr. Ginsburg, as if duty were a geological eon,
and throwing himself across the flowered velvet lounge in the parlor.
"I'll lay down if it suits you better."

Mr. Ginsburg was of a cut that never appears on a classy clothes
advertisement or in the silver frame on the bird's-eye maple
dressing-table of sweet sixteen or more; he belonged to the less
ornamented but not unimportant stratum that manufactures the classy
clothes by the hundred thousand, and eventually develops into husba