hed she is--goes to the party with a grand boy like Marcus
and comes home like she was muzzled! Nothing to say! If I was out with a
young man so often I could talk."

"Please, mamma, pull down the shade."

"'Please, mamma, pull down the shade!'" mimicked Mrs. Katzenstein, in a
high falsetto. "After I rush round all day yesterday for the pink wreath
for her hair, that's what I hear the next morning--that's the thanks I
get!"

Birdie pulled the comforter up closer about her ears, and the head on
the rumpled pillow burrowed deeper.

"And such laziness! I been up two hours with my _Kuechen_ and cheese-pie
fixed already for this afternoon, and my daughter sleeps like a lady!
The man that gets her I don't envy!"

The pink-and-white mound on the bed heaved like a ship at sea.

"In a minute, mamma!"

Mrs. Katzenstein jerked up a filmy gown from across the back of a chair
and held it from her at arm's-length.

"Anybody's too good for a girl that ain't got no order! I wonder what
Marcus Gump would say if he knew how you treat your things? Her good
pink dress that I paid twenty dollars for the making alone she throws
round like it cost nothing! Sack-cloth is too good! I don't put it
away--you can wait on yourself."

However, as she spoke Mrs. Katzenstein folded the pink gown, with an
avalanche of lace flowing from the bodice, lengthwise in a drawer and
smothered it with tissue-paper.

"That a girl like that shouldn't be ashamed to let her poor old mother
wait on her!"

"I'd put it away, mamma, if you'd just give me time."

"Tuesday, when I have the ladies and my card party, she sleeps! No
consideration that girl has got for her mother!"

Birdie swung herself to the side of the bed; her wealth of crow-blue
hair fell over her shoulders; sleep trembled on her lashes.

"I'm up, ain't I? Now are you satisfied?"

"For all the help you are to me you might as well stay in bed the rest
of the morning. A girl that can come home from a party and have nothing
to say! But for my part I don't want to know. I guess they had a big
blow-out, didn't they?"

Birdie, high-chested as Juno, with wide, firm shoulders that sloped as
must have sloped the shoulders of Artemis when they tempted Actaeon,
coiled her hair before the mirror with the gesture that has belonged to
women since first they coiled their hair. Her cheeks, fleshly but
fruit-like in their freshness, might have belonged to a buxom nymph of
the grove.

"I wish you co