mth.

"I know she ain't!"

"Aw, she is, too!"

"I asks her, 'Momsey, are you a Gentile?'" went on Ikey. "Und she
answers to me, 'Ikey, I am all kinds of religions.'--_Now_!"

"Ain't her mother a Gentile?" demanded Henry.

"I'm glat to say it!"

"And her father was."

"Sure! Just go in und look at him!"

"Then what's the matter with you! She's _got_ to be a Gentile!"

Ikey recognized the unanswerableness of the argument. "Vell," he
declared stoutly, "I lof her anyhow!"

A fourth boy leaned from a drawing-room window. "Telephone!" he called
down.

"Ach! Dat telephone!" Ikey propped himself against the sun-dial.
"Since yesterday afternoon alretty, she rings und nefer stops! 'Vere
iss Miss Hattie?'--dat Wallace, he iss awful lofsick! 'I don't know.'
'Vere iss Miss Susan?' 'I don't know.' 'Vere iss my daughter?'--de
olt lady! 'I don't know.'--All night by dat telephone, I sit und lie!"

"Ha! Ha!" Peter, the pale, seized the excuse to drop back upon the
cool grass. "How can you _sit_ and _lie_?"

"Smarty, you're too fresh!" charged Ikey. "How can you sit und be
lazy? Look vat stands on dis sun-dial!--_Tempus Fugits_. Dat means,
'De morning iss going.' So you pick up fast all de grass bits by de
benches.--Und if somebody asks, 'Vere iss Mr. Farvel,' I says, 'I don't
know,' und dat iss de truth. Because he iss gone oudt all night, und
dat iss not nice for ministers." He shook his head at the lawn mower.

"Say, a woman wants to talk with Mrs. Milo," reminded the boy who was
hanging out of the window.

"She can vant so much as she likes," returned Ikey, mowing calmly.

"Oo! You oughta heard her!--Shall I say she's gone?"

"Say she's gone, t'ank gootness," instructed Ikey. And as the boy
precipitated himself backward out of sight, "Ach, dat's vat's wrong mit
dis world!--de mutter business. Mrs. Milo, Mrs. Bunkum, und your
mutter, und your mutter----"

"Aw, my mother's as good as your mother!" boasted Henry, chivalrously.

"Dat can't be. Because you nefer _hat_ a mutter--you vas left in dat
basket." He pointed. "Vasn't you? Und _my_ mutter"--proudly--"she
iss dead."

Peter lifted longing eyes. "Gee, I wish _I_ had a mother."

"A-a-a-ah!" Ikey waggled a wise head. "You kids, you vould like goot
mutters--und you git left in baskets. Und Momsey says dat lots of
times mutters dat _iss_ goot mutters, dey don't haf no children." Then
to Henry, who, like Peter, had seized upon an