ays, the louder it plays. Automobiles; a elevator for his
mother! I--Ach, Renie, I--I feel like all our troubles are over. I--
Ach, Renie, you should know how it feels to be a mother."

Tears rained frankly down Mrs. Shongut's face and she smiled through
their mist, and her outstretched arms would tremble.

"Renie, come to mamma!"

Miss Shongut, quivering, drew herself beyond their reach. "Such talk!
Honest, mamma, you--you make me ashamed, and mad like anything, too. I
wouldn't marry a little old squashy fellow like him if he was worth the
mint."

"Renie! Re-nie!"

"An old fellow, just because he's got money and--"

"Old! Max Hochenheimer ain't more than in his first thirties, and old
she calls him! When a man makes hisself by hard work he 'ain't got time
to keep young, with silk socks and creased pants, and hair-tonic what
smells up my house a hour after Izzy's been gone. It ain't the color of
a man's vest, Renie--it's the color of his heart, underneath it. When
papa was a young man, do you think, if I had looked at the cigar ashes
on his vest instead of at what was underneath, that I--"

"That talk's no use with me, mamma."

"Renie; you--you wouldn't do it--you wouldn't refuse him?"

Her reply leaped out suddenly, full of fire: "It's not me or my feelings
you care anything about. Every one but me you think about first. What
about me? What about me? I'm the one that's got to do the marrying and
live with him. I'm the one you're trying to sell off like I was cattle.
I'm the one! I'm the one!"

"Renie!"

"Yes; sell me off--sell me off--like cattle!"

Tears, blinding, scalding, searing, rushed down her cheeks, and her
smooth bosom, where the wrapper fell away to reveal it, heaved with the
storm beneath.

"But you can't sell me--you can't! You can't keep nagging to get me
married off. I can get out, but I won't be married out! If I wasn't
afraid of papa, with his heart, I'd tell him so, too. I'd tell him so
now. I won't be married out--I won't be married out! I won't! I won't!"

Mrs. Shongut clasped her cheeks in the vise of her two hands. "Married
out! She reproaches me yet--a mother that would go through fire for her
children's happiness!"

"Always you're making me uncomfortable that I'm not married yet--not
papa or Izzy, but you--you! Never does one of the girls get engaged that
you don't look at me like I was wearing the welcome off the door-mat."

"Listen to my own child talk to me! No wonder you