head, that he
had never seen low, wilting there against his breast.

He could not be done with soothing her, his own face suddenly as
puckered as an old shoe, his chin like the toe curling up.

"Mamma, Mamma, I didn't know! God knows I never dreamt--"

"I know you didn't, Mosher. I ain't mad. I'm only tired. I 'ain't got
the struggle left in me. This feeling won't last in me, I'll be all
right, but I'm tired, Mosher--so tired."

"My poor Sara!"

"And frightened. Such a blonde in a red hat. Cabarets. Taxicabs. Night
after night. Mosher, hold me. I'm frightened."

Cheek to cheek in their dining room of too-carved oak, twin shadow-boxed
paintings of Fruit and Fish, the cut-glass punch bowl with the hooked-on
cups, the cotton palm, casually rigid velour drapes, the elusive floor
bell, they huddled, these two, whose eyes were branded with the scars
of what they had looked upon, and a slow, a vast anger began to rise in
Mosher, as if the blood in his throat were choking him, and a surge of
it, almost purple, rose out of his collar and stained his face.

"Loafer! Low-life! No-'count! His whole body ain't worth so much as your
little finger. I'll learn him to be a worry to you with this all-night
business. By God! I'll learn my loafer of a son to--"

On the pistol shot of that, Sara's body jumped out of its rigidity, all
her faculties coiled to spring.

"He isn't! You know he isn't! 'Loafer'! Shame on you! Whatever else he
is, he's not a loafer. Boys will be boys--you say so yourself. 'Loafer'!
You should know once what some parents go through with real _loafers_
for sons--"

"No child what brings you such worry is anything else than a loafer!"

"And I say 'no'! The minute I so much as give you a finger in finding
fault with that boy, right away you take a hand!"

"I'll break his--"

"You don't know yet a joke when you hear one. I wanted to get you mad! I
get a little tired and I try to make myself funny."

"There wasn't no funniness in the way your eyes looked when you--"

"I tell you I didn't mean one word. No matter what uneasiness that child
has brought me, always he has given me more in happiness. Twice more.
That's what he's been. Twice of everything to make up for--for only
being half of my twins."

"Then what the devil is--"

"I don't envy Gussie her Leo and his steady ways. Didn't you say
yourself for a boy like ours you got to pay with a little uneasiness?"

"Not when that little uneasiness is e