e anything but vegetables, they'd get out and hustle with
keeping house, to work some of their flabbiness off and give us a chance to
get somebody in besides a chocolate-eating, novel-reading crowd of useless
women who think, mommy, you're a dumbwaiter, chambermaid, lady's maid, and
French chef rolled in one! Honest, ma, if you carry that ice-water up to
Katz to-night on the sly, with that big son of hers to come down and get
it, I--I'll go right up and tell her what I think of her if she leaves
to-morrow."

"Mr. Vetsburg, you--you mustn't listen to her."

"Can't take a day off for a rest at Atlantic City, because their old Easter
dinner might go down the wrong side. Honest, mama, to--to think how you're
letting a crowd of old, flabby women that aren't fit even to wipe your
shoes make a regular servant out of you! Mommy!"

There were tears in Miss Kaufman's voice, actual tears, big and bright, in
her eyes, and two spots of color had popped out in her cheeks.

"Ruby, when--when a woman like me makes her living off her boarders, she
can't afford to be so particular. You think it's a pleasure I can't slam
the door right in Mrs. Katz's face when six times a day she orders towels
and ice-water? You think it's a pleasure I got to take sass from such a bad
boy like Irving? I tell you, Ruby, it's easy talk from a girl that doesn't
understand. _Ach_, you--you make me ashamed before Mr. Vetsburg you should
run down to the people we make our living off of."

Miss Kaufman flashed her vivid face toward Mr. Vetsburg, still low there in
his chair. She was trembling. "Vetsy knows! He's the only one in this house
does know! He 'ain't been here with us ten years, ever since we started in
this big house, not--not to know he's the only one thinks you're here for
anything except impudence and running stairs and standing sass from the bad
boys of lazy mothers. You know, don't you, Vetsy?"

"Ruby! Mr. Vetsburg, you--you must excuse--"

From the depths of his chair Mr. Vetsburg's voice came slow and carefully
weighed. "My only complaint, Mrs. Kaufman, with what Ruby has got to say is
it ain't strong enough. It maybe ain't none of my business, but always I
have told you that for your own good you're too _gemuetlich_. No wonder
every boarder what you got stays year in and year out till even the biggest
kickers pay more board sooner as go. In my business, Mrs. Kaufman, it's the
same, right away if I get too easy with--"

"But, Mr. Vetsburg