s Hugo used to
protest, aghast at some petty act of parsimony.

"But, Ma, what do you want to scrimp like that for! You're the worst
tightwad I ever saw. Here, take this ten and blow it. You're worse than
the squirrels in the park, darned if you ain't!"

She couldn't resist the ten. Neither could she resist showing it, next
day, to Mrs. Brunswick, Mrs. Lamb, and Mrs. Wormser. "How my son Hugo
spoils me! He takes out a ten-dollar bill, and he stuffs it into my hand
and says 'Ma, you're the worst tightwad I ever saw.'" She laughed
contentedly. But she did not blow the ten. As she grew older Hugo
regularly lied to her about the price of theatre tickets, dainties,
articles of dress, railway fares, luxuries. Her credulity increased with
age, shrewd though she naturally was.

It was a second blooming for Ma Mandle. When he surprised her with an
evening at the theatre she would fuss before her mirror for a full
hour. "Some gal!" Hugo would shout when finally she emerged.
"Everybody'll be asking who the old man is you're out with. First thing
I know I'll have a police-woman after me for going around with a
chicken."

"Don't talk foolishness." But she would flush like a bride. She liked a
musical comedy with a lot of girls in it and a good-looking tenor. Next
day you would hear her humming the catch-tune in an airy falsetto.
Sometimes she wondered about him. She was, after all, a rather wise old
lady, and she knew something of men. She had a secret horror of his
becoming what she called fast.

"Why don't you take out some nice young girl instead of an old woman
like me, Hugo? Any girl would be only too glad." But in her heart was a
dread. She thought of Mrs. Lamb, Mrs. Wormser, and Mrs. Brunswick.

So they had gone on, year after year, in the comfortable flat on South
Park Avenue. A pleasant thing, life.

And then Hugo married, suddenly, breathlessly, as a man of forty does.

Afterward, Ma Mandle could recall almost nothing from which she might
have taken warning. That was because he had said so little. She
remembered that he had come home to dinner one evening and had spoken
admiringly of a woman buyer from Omaha. He did not often speak of
business.

"She buys like a man," he had said at dinner. "I never saw anything like
it. Knew what she wanted and got it. She bought all my best numbers at
rock bottom. I sold her a four-figure bill in half an hour. And no fuss.
Everything right to the point and when I asked her out