the taxi, I says: 'Automobile-riding sure
is grand!' Then he says: 'If something I'm hoping for happens in a
couple of days, me and Louis Epstein are going to buy one of those
five-hundred-dollar roadsters together. Then we can have a swell time
together, Birdie!' Just like that he said it."

"You're a good girl, Birdie, and you deserve the best. To-night you wear
your blue. Tillie, come in and set the chairs straight--nice--Miss
Birdie's going to have company. How that Mrs. Ginsburg got on my nerves,
I can't tell you, with her Meena and her brag!"

"I should say so!"

* * * * *

At eight o'clock Birdie again posed before her mirror. Her
robin's-egg-blue dress where it fell away from her rather splendid and
carefully powdered chest was spangled with small sequins, which glinted
like stars. There was a corresponding galaxy of spangles arranged
bandeau-fashion in her hair. The Blessed Damozel, when she leaned out
from the golden bar of Heaven, wore seven significant stars in her hair.
Birdie also wore stars in her hair, in her eyes, and in her heart and on
her bosom.

"I think this dress makes me look grand and thin, mamma."

"It cost enough."

"Do you like those silver spangles in my hair? That's the way Bella
Block wore hers at the theater the other night."

"I don't believe in such fussiness for girls! Your mother before you
didn't have it. If you want you can wear my diamond bow-knot. Have
Tillie come in and pin it on you with the safety-catch. I'm so nervous
like a cat!"

"What are you so nervous about, mamma?"

"Say, Birdie, you know I'm the last one to talk about such things--but
the Gumps don't start things without intentions. Flora told me herself
that Ben Gump got engaged to her sister the second time he called."

"Aw, mamma!"

"Believe me, if it should come to us we got no cause to complain. Grand
prospects! Grand boy! And what more do you want? Papa and me, with such
a son-in-law, can enjoy our old age."

"Such talk!"

"You think I let on to anybody! All I say is to you; but a girl needs
advice from her parents. Look at your sister Ray--she was a smart and
sensible girl."

"Abe, with his stuttering and all!"

"Just the same he is a good husband to her and makes her a good living.
You think she would have got him if she hadn't fixed things for
herself--kind of! Believe me, it was hard enough for us, then, before
papa went into petticoats."

"She can have h