an precision into a kitchen so correspondingly spick and
span that even its silence smelled scoured, rows of tins shining into it.
A dun-colored kind of dusk, soot floating in it, began to filter down the
air-shaft, dimming them.

Mrs. Ross lowered the shade and lighted the gas-jet. So short that in the
long run she wormed first through a crowd, she was full of the genial
curves that, though they bespoke three lumps in her coffee in an elevator
and escalator age, had not yet reached uncongenial proportions. In fact,
now, brushing with her bare forearm across her moistly pink face, she was
like Flora, who, rather than fade, became buxom.

A door slammed in an outer hall, as she was still stirring and looking down
into the stew.

"Edwin!"

"Yes, mother."

"Don't track through the parlor."

"Aw!"

"You hear me?"

"I yain't! Gee, can't a feller walk?"

"Put your books on the hat-rack."

"I am."

She supped up bird-like from the tip of her spoon, smacking for flavor.

"I made you an asafetida-bag, Edwin, it's in your drawer. Don't you leave
this house to-morrow without it on."

"Aw-w-w-w-w!"

"It don't smell."

"Where's my stamp-book?"

"On your table, where it belongs."

"Gee whiz! if you got my Argentine stamps mixed!"

"Get washed."

"Where's my batteries?"

"Under your bed, where they belong."

"I'm hungry."

"Your father'll be home any minute now. Don't spoil your appetite."

"I got ninety in manual training, mother."

"Did yuh, Edwin?"

"All the other fellows only got seventy and eighty."

"Mamma's boy leads 'em."

He entered at that, submitting to a kiss upon an averted cheek.

"See what mother's fixed for you!"

"M-m-m-m! fritters!"

"Don't touch!"

"M-m-m-m--lamb stew!"

"I shopped all morning to get okra to go in it for your father."

"M-m-m-m-m!"

She tiptoed up to kiss him again, this time at the back of the neck,
carefully averting her floury hands.

"Mamma's boy! I made you three pen-wipers to-day out of the old red
table-cover."

"Aw, fellers don't use pen-wipers!"

He set up a jiggling, his great feet coming down with a clatter.

"Stop!"

"Can't I jig?"

"No; not with neighbors underneath."

He flopped down, hooking his heels in the chair-rung.

At sixteen's stage of cruel hazing into man's estate Edwin Ross, whose
voice, all in a breath, could slip up from the quality of rock in the
drilling to the more brittle octave of early-morning milk-bottles,