admitted, swishingly, through his mustache, inhaling
copiously the draughts of Sara's coffee.

Do not judge from the mustache cup with the gilt "Papa" inscribed, that
Sara's home did not meticulously reflect the newer McKinley period, so
to speak, of the cut-glass-china closet, curio cabinet, brass bedstead,
velour upholstery, and the marbelette Psyche.

They had furnished newly three years before, the year the business
almost doubled, Sara and Gussie simultaneously, the two of them poring
with bibliophiles' fervor over Grand Rapids catalogic literature.

Bravely had Sara, even more so than Gussie, sacrificed her old regime to
the dealer. Only a samovar remained. A red-and-white pressed-glass punch
bowl, purchased out of Nicholas's--aged fourteen--pig-bank savings. An
enlarged crayon of her twins from a baby picture. A patent rocker which
she kept in the kitchen. (It fitted her so for the attitude of peeling.)
Two bisque plaques, with embossed angels. Another chair capable of
metamorphosis into a ladder. And Mosher's cup.

From this Mosher drank with gusto. His mustache, to Sara so thrillingly
American, without its complement of beard, could flare so above the
relishing sounds of drinking. It flared now and Mosher would share none
of her concern.

"You got two talents, Sara. First, for being my wife; and second, for
wasting worry like it don't cost you nothing in health or trips to
Cold Springs in the Catskills for the baths. Like it says in Nicky's
Shakespeare, a boy who don't sow his wild oats when he's young will some
day do 'em under another name that don't smell so sweet."

"I--It ain't like I can talk over Nicky with you, Mosher, like another
woman could with her husband. Either you give him right or right away
you get so mad you make it worse with him than better."

"Now, Sara--"

"But only this morning that Mrs. Lessauer I meet sometimes at Epstein's
fish store--you know the rich sausage-casings Lessauers--she says to me
this morning, she says with her sweetness full of such a meanness, like
it was knives in me--'Me and my son and daughter-in-law was coming out
of a movie last night and we saw your son getting into a taxicab with
such a blonde in a red hat!' The way she said it, Mosher, like a cat
licking its whiskers--'such a blonde in a red hat'!"

"I wish I had one dollar in my pocket for every blond hat with red hair
her Felix had before he married."

"But it's the second time this week I hear it,