ess you want you should look all worn out
when a certain young man what I know walks down to meet our train at
Atlantic City this afternoon, eh?"

"Oh, mommy, mommy!" And Ruby lay back against the luxury of pillows.

At eleven the morning rose to its climax--the butcher, the baker, and every
sort of maker hustling in and out the basementway; the sweeping of upstairs
halls; windows flung open and lace curtains looped high; the smell of
spring pouring in even from asphalt; sounds of scrubbing from various
stoops; shouts of drivers from a narrow street wedged with its
Saturday-morning blockade of delivery wagons, and a crosstown line of
motor-cars, tops back and nosing for the speedway of upper Broadway. A
homely bouquet of odors rose from the basement kitchen, drifting up through
the halls, the smell of mutton bubbling as it stewed.

After a morning of up-stairs and down-stairs and in and out of chambers,
Mrs. Kaufman, enveloped in a long-sleeved apron still angular with starch,
hung up the telephone receiver in the hall just beneath the staircase and
entered her bedroom, sitting down rather heavily beside the open shelf of
her desk. A long envelope lay uppermost on that desk, and she took it up
slowly, blinking her eyes shut and holding them squeezed tight as if she
would press back a vision, even then a tear oozing through. She blinked it
back, but her mouth was wry with the taste of tears.

A slatternly maid poked her head in through the open door. "Mrs. Katz broke
'er mug!"

"Take the one off Mr. Krakow's wash-stand and give it to her, Tillie."

She was crying now frankly, and when the door swung closed, even though it
swung back again on its insufficient hinge, she let her head fall forward
into the pillow of her arms, the curve of her back rising and falling.

But after a while the greengrocer came on his monthly mission, in his white
apron and shirt-sleeves, and she compared stubs with him from a file on her
desk and balanced her account with careful squinted glance and a keen eye
for an overcharge on a cut of breakfast bacon.

On the very heels of him, so that they met and danced to pass each other in
the doorway, Mr. Vetsburg entered, with an overcoat flung across his right
arm and his left sagging to a small black traveling-bag.

"Well," he said, standing in the frame of the open door, his derby well
back on his head and regarding her there beside the small desk, "is this
what you call ready at twelve?"