ide."

"Hurrah for ma! 'Down with the peroxide and the straight fronts,' she
says."

"Izzy, that ain't so nice neither to talk such things before your
sisters."

"Don't listen to him, mamma. Just let me ask you, mamma, just let me ask
you, papa--papa, listen: did you ever in your life have a real vacation?
What were those two weeks in Arverne for you last summer compared to on
board a ship? You--"

"That's what I need yet--shipboard! I tell you I'm an old man and I'm
glad that I got a home where I can take off my shoes and sit in comfort
with my rheumatism."

"Hannah Levin's father limped ten times worse than you, papa. Didn't he,
mamma? And since he took Hannah over last summer not one stroke has he
had since. And she--Well, you see what she did for herself."

Mrs. Binswanger paused in her stitch. "That's so, Simon; Hannah Levin
should grab for herself a man like Albert Hamburger. She should fall
into the human-hair Hamburger family, a stick like her! At fish-market
when he lived down-town each Friday morning I used to meet old man
Levin, and I should say his knees were worse as yours, papa."

"When my daughter marries a Albert Hamburger, then maybe too we can
afford to take a trip to Europe."

Miss Binswanger raised her eyes, great dark pools glozed over with
tears. "All right then, I'll huck at home. But let me tell you, papa,
since you come right out and mention it, that's where she met Albert
Hamburger, if anybody should ask you, right on board the ship. Those
kind don't lie round Arverne with that cheap crowd of week-end
salesmen."

"There she goes on my profesh again!"

"That's where she met him, since you talk about such things, papa, right
on the steamer."

"So!" Mrs. Binswanger let fall idle hands into her lap. "So!"

"Sure. Didn't you know that, mamma? She was going over for just ten
weeks with her mother and father to take a few singing-lessons when they
got to Paris, just like I want to, and right on the ship going over she
met him and they got engaged."

"So!"

"Yes, mamma."

Mr. Binswanger fell into the attitude of reading again, knees crossed
and one carpet slipper dangling. "I know plenty girls as get engaged on
dry land, Carrie; just get such ideas that they don't out of your head."

"I don't say, Simon, I don't give you right, but after a winter like I
been through I feel like maybe it's better to go as to stay."

"That's right, ma, loosen up and she'll get you yet."

"It ain'