he table for the
seventh evening this week. Nix for mine! Good night! Good night!" And he
fell to burrowing his head deeper among the pillows.

"You don't need to listen, Izzy Binswanger. I wasn't talking to you,
anyways."

"No, to your mother you was talking--always to me. I got to hear it."

A sudden vibration darted through Mrs. Binswanger's body, straightening
it. "Always me! I tell you, Simon, with your family you 'ain't got no
troubles. I got 'em all. How he sits there behind his newspaper just
like a boarder and not in the family! I tell you more as once in my life
I have wished there was never a newspaper printed. Right under his nose
he sits with one glued every evening."

"Na, na, old lady!"

"That sweet talk don't make no neverminds with me. 'Na, na,' he says. I
tell you even when my children was babies how they could cry every night
right under his nose and never a hand would that man raise to help me.
I tell you my husband's a grand help to me. 'Such a grand husband,' the
ladies always say to me I got. I wish they should know what I know!"

Mr. Binswanger tossed aside his newspaper and raised his spectacles to
his horseshoe expanse of bald head. His face radiated into a smile
that brought out the whole chirography of fine lines, and his eyes
disappeared in laughter like two raisins poked into dough.

"Na, na, old lady, na, na!" He made to pinch her cheek where it bagged
toward a soft scallop of double chin, but she withdrew querulously.

"I tell you what I been through this winter, with Izzy out in a Middle
West territory where only once in four months I can see him, and my Ray
and her going-ons with them little snips, and now Miriam with her Europe
on the brain. I tell you that if anybody in this family needs Europe
it's me for my health, better as Miriam for her singing and her style.
Such nagging I have got ringing in my ears about it I think it's easier
to go as to stay home with long faces."

Erect on the edge of her chair Miriam inclined toward her parent.
"That's just what I been saying, mamma; all four of us need it. Not only
me and Ray, but--"

"Leave me out, missy!"

"Not only us two for our education, mamma, but a trip like that can make
you and papa ten years younger. Read what the booklet says. It--"

"I'm an old woman and I don't want I should try to look young like on
the streets here up-town you can see the women. What comes natural to me
like gray hairs I don't got to try to h