and daddie--"

"Two white-enamel chairs to stand on either side of the crib so when
mummie and daddie run up in their evening clothes to kiss baby good
night--Oh, I just mean two pretty white chairs, one for mummie and one
for daddie." Little crash.

"I ask you, Nicky, is that poetical? 'So when mummie and daddie run up
to kiss baby good night.' I remember once in Russia, Nicky, all the
evening clothes we had was our nightgowns, but when you and your little
twin brother were two and a half years old, one night I--"

"Mrs. Turkletaub, did you have twins?"

"Did I have twins, Nicky, she asks me. She didn't know you were twins.
A red one I had, as red as my black one is black. You see my Nicky how
black and mad-looking he is even when he's glad; well, just so--"

"Now, mother!"

"Just so beautiful and fierce and red was my other beautiful baby. You
didn't know, Ada, that a piece of my heart, the red of my blood, I left
lying out there. Nicky--she didn't know--"

She could be so blanched and so stricken when the saga of her motherhood
came out in her eyes, the pallor of her face jutting out her features
like lonely landmarks on waste land, that her husband and her son had
learned how to dread for her and spare her.

"Now, mother!" said Nicholas, and rose to stand behind her chair,
holding her poor, quavering chin in the cup of his hand. "Come, one
rainy Sunday is enough. Let's not have an indoor as well as an outdoor
storm. Come along. Didn't I hear Miss Ada play the piano one evening
over at Leo's? Up-see-la! Who said you weren't my favorite dancing
partner?" and waltzed her, half dragging back, toward the parlor. "Come,
some music!"

There were the usual demurrings from Ada, rather prettily pink, and Mrs.
Turkletaub, with the threat of sobs swallowed, opening the upright piano
to dust the dustless keyboard with her apron, and Nicholas, his sagging
pipe quickly supplied with one of the rose-twined cuspidors for
ash receiver, hunched down in the pink-velour armchair of enormous
upholstered hips.

The "Turkish Patrol" was what Ada played, and then, "Who Is Sylvia?" and
sang it, as frailly as a bird.

At one o'clock there was dinner, that immemorial Sunday meal of roast
chicken with its supplicating legs up off the platter; dressing to be
gouged out; sweet potatoes in amber icing; a master stroke of Mrs.
Turkletaub's called "_matzos klose_," balls of unleavened bread,
sizzling, even as she served them, in a hot