you think it would hurt Izzy to make a move once in a
while? He was the one made her cry, anyway, guying her about spaghetti
on the brain."

"Sure I did. Wasn't she running down my profesh? She's got to go to
Europe for the summer, because the traveling salesmen she meets at home
ain't good enough for her. Well, of all the nerve!"

"Just look at him, mamma, stretched out on the sofa there like he was a
king!"

Full flung and from a tufted leather couch Isadore Binswanger turned on
his pillow, flashing his dark eyes and white teeth full upon her.

"Go chase yourself, Blackey!"

"Blackey! Let me just tell you, Mr. Smarty, that alongside of you I'm so
blond I'm dizzy."

"Come and give your big brother a French kiss, Blackey."

"Like fun I will!"

"Do what I say or I'll--"

Mrs. Binswanger rapped her darning-ball with a thimbled finger.

"Izzy, stop teasing your sister."

"You just ask me to press your white-flannel pants for you the next time
you want to play Palm Beach with yourself, and see if I do it or not.
You just ask me!"

He made a great feint of lunging after her, and she dodged behind her
mother's rocking-chair, tilting it sharply.

"Children!"

"Mamma, don't you let him touch me!"

"You--you little imp, you!"

"Children!"

"I tell you, ma, that kid's getting too fresh."

"You spoil her, Izzy, more as any one."

"It's those yellow novels, and that gang of drugstore snips you let her
run with will be her ruination. If she was my kid I bet I'd have kept
her in school another year."

"You shut up, Izzy Binswanger, and mind your own business. You never
even went as long as me."

"With a boy it's different."

"You better lay pretty low, Izzy Binswanger, or I can tell a few tales.
I guess I didn't see you the night after you got in from your last trip,
in your white-flannel pants I pressed, dancing on the Brighton boat with
that peroxide queen alrighty."

This time his face darkened with the blood of anger.

"You little imp, I'll--"

"Children! Stop it, do you hear! Ray, go right this minute and call
Miriam and bring me my glasses. Izzy, do you think it's so nice that a
grown man should tease his little sister?"

"I'll be glad when he goes out on his Western trip next week."

"Skidoo, you little imp!"

She tossed her head in high-spirited distemper and flounced through the
doorway. He rose from his mound of pillows, jerking his daring waistcoat
into place, flinging each knee outwa