lls to my worst enemy, Mr.
Latz."

"If you were mine--I mean--if--the--say--was mine, I wouldn't stop until
I had you to every specialist in Europe. I know a thing or two about
those fellows over there. Some of them are wonders."

Mrs. Samstag looked off, her profile inclined to lift and fall as if by
little pulleys of emotion.

"That's easier said than done, Mr. Latz, by a--a widow who wants to do
right by her grown daughter and living so--high since the war."

"I--I--" said Mr. Latz, leaping impulsively forward on the chair that
was as tightly upholstered in effect as he in his modish suit, then
clutching himself there as if he had caught the impulse on the fly--"I
just wish I could help."

"Oh!" she said, and threw up a swift, brown look from the lace making.

He laughed, but from nervousness.

"My little mother was an ailer too."

"That's me, Mr. Latz. Not sick--just ailing. I always say that it's
ridiculous that a woman in such perfect health as I am should be such a
sufferer."

"Same with her and her joints."

"Why, I can outdo Alma when it comes to dancing down in the grill with
the young people of an evening, or shopping."

"More like sisters than any mother and daughter I ever saw."

"Mother and daughter, but which is which from the back, some of my
friends put it," said Mrs. Samstag, not without a curve to her voice,
then hastily: "But the best child, Mr. Latz. The best that ever lived.
A regular little mother to me in my spells."

"Nice girl, Alma."

"It snowed so the day of--my husband's funeral. Why, do you know that up
to then I never had an attack of neuralgia in my life. Didn't even know
what a headache was. That long drive. That windy hill-top with two men
to keep me from jumping into the grave after him. Ask Alma. That's how I
care when I care. But of course, as the saying is, time heals. But
that's how I got my first attack. Intenseness is what the doctors called
it. I'm terribly intense."

"I--guess when a woman like you--cares like--you--cared, it's not much
use hoping you would ever--care again. That's about the way of it, ain't
it?"

If he had known it, there was something about his own intensity of
expression to inspire mirth. His eyebrows lifted to little gothic arches
of anxiety, a rash of tiny perspiration broke out over his blue shaved
face and as he sat on the edge of his chair, it seemed that inevitably
the tight sausage-like knees must push their way through mere fabri