ar we were in this country. I was three years old then, and, when she got
just crazy with homesickness, we used to dance it to each other evenings on
the kitchen floor."

"Say, have you heard the news?"

"No."

"Guess."

"Can't."

"Hammerstein is bringing over the crowned heads of Europe for vaudeville."

Mrs. Coblenz moved back a step, her mouth falling open.

"Why, Milton Bauer, in the old country a man could be strung up for saying
less than that!"

"That didn't get across. Try another. A Frenchman and his wife were
traveling in Russia, and--"

"If--if you had an old mother like mine up-stairs, Milton, eating out her
heart and her days and her weeks and her months over a husband's grave
somewhere in Siberia and a son's grave somewhere in Kishinef, you wouldn't
see the joke neither."

Mr. Bauer executed a self-administered pat sharply against the back of his
hand.

"Keeper," he said, "put me in the brain ward. I--I'm sorry, Mrs. C., so
help me! Didn't mean to. How is your mother, Mrs. C.? Seems to me, at the
dance the other night, Selene said she was fine and dandy."

"Selene ain't the best judge of her poor old grandmother. It's hard for a
young girl to have patience for old age sitting and chewing all day over
the past. It's right pitiful the way her grandmother knows it, too, and
makes herself talk English all the time to please the child and tries to
perk up for her. Selene, thank God, 'ain't suffered, and can't sympathize!"

"What's ailing her, Mrs. C.? I kinda miss seeing the old lady sitting down
here in the store."

"It's the last year or so, Milt. Just like all of a sudden a woman as
active as mama always was, her health and--her mind kind of went off with a
pop."

"Thu! Thu!"

"Doctor says with care she can live for years, but--but it seems terrible
the way her--poor mind keeps skipping back. Past all these thirty years in
America to--even weeks before I was born. The night they--took my father
off to Siberia, with his bare feet in the snow--for distributing papers
they found on him--papers that used the word 'svoboda'--'freedom.' And the
time, ten years later--they shot down my brother right in front of her
for--the same reason. She keeps living it over--living it over till
I--could die."

"Say, ain't that just a shame, though!"

"Living it, and living it, and living it! The night with me, a heavy
three-year-old, in her arms that she got us to the border, dragging a pack
of linens w