"Sure!"
"Girls you can always get--not? Girls nowadays ain't what they used to be neither. I'd like to see a girl do to-day for papa what I did--how I was in the store and kitchen all at once; then we didn't have no satin-shoe clerks! Girls ain't what they used to be; in my day working-girls had no time for fine-smelling cologne-water and--"
"All girls ain't alike, mamma--satin shoes cost no more nowadays as leather. We got a dollar-ninety-eight satin pump, you wouldn't believe it--and such a seller! All girls ain't alike, mamma."
"What you mean, Abie?"
Mr. Ginsburg turned on the couch so that his face was close to the wall, and his voice half lost in the curve of his arm.
"Well, once in a while you come across a girl that ain't--ain't like the rest of 'em. Well, there ought to be girls that ain't like the rest of 'em, oughtn't there?"
Mrs. Ginsburg's rocking and fanning slowed down a bit; a curious moment fell over the little room; a nerve-tingling quiescence that in its pregnant moment can race the mind back over an eternity--a silence that is cold with sweat, like the second when a doctor removes his stethoscope from over a patient's left breast and looks at him with a film of pity glazing his eyes.
"What you mean, Abie? Tell mamma what you mean. I ain't the one to stand in your light." Mrs. Ginsburg's speech clogged in her throat.
"You know you always got a home with me, mamma. You know, no matter what comes, I always got to tuck you in bed at night and fix the windows for you. You know you always got with me the best kind of a home I got to give you. Ain't it?"
His hand crept out and rested lightly--ever so lightly--on his mother's knee.
"Abie, you never talked like this before--I won't stand in your way, Abie. If you can make up your mind, Beulah Washeim or Hannah Rosenblatt, either would be--"
"Aw, mamma, it ain't them."
Mrs. Ginsburg's hand closed tightly over her son's; a train swooped past and created a flurry of warm breeze in the room.
"Who--is--it, Abie? Don't be afraid to tell mamma."
"Why, mamma, it ain't no one! Can't a fellow just talk? You started it, didn't you? I was just talking 'cause you was."
"He scares me yet! No consideration that boy has got for his mother! Abie, a little broth--you ain't got no fever, Abie--your head is cool like ice."
"You ain't had no supper yet, mamma."
"I had coffee at five o'clock; for myself I never worry. I'm glad enough you feel all right. It's eight o'clock, Abie--I go me to bed. To-morrow I go to market with Yetta."
"Aw, mamma, now why for do you--"
"I ain't too proud--such high-toned notions I ain't got. For what I pay forty-two cents for eggs up here when I can get 'em for thirty-eight?"
"Be careful, mamma; don't fall over the chair--you want a light?"
"No. Write me a note for the milkman, Abie, before you go to bed, and leave it out with the bottles--half a pint of double cream I want. I make you cream-potatoes for supper to-morrow. I laid your blue shirt on your bed, Abie--don't go to bed on it. It's the last time I iron it; but once more you can wear it, then I make dust-rags. I ironed it soft like you like."
"Yes, mamma."
"Put the cover on the canary, too, Abie. That night you went to the lodge he chirped and chirped, just like you was lost and he was crying 'cause me and him was lonely."
"Yes, mamma. Wait till I light the gas in your room for you--you'll stumble."
"It's too hot for light; I can see by the Magintys' kitchen light across the air-shaft. What she does in her kitchen so late I don't know--such housekeeping! Yesterday with my own eyes I seen her shake a table-cloth out the window with a hole like my hand in it. She should know what I think of such ways."
Mrs. Ginsburg moved through the gloom, steering carefully round the phantom furniture. From his place on the couch her son could hear her moving about her tiny room adjoining the kitchen. A shoe dropped and, after a satisfying interval, another; the padding of bare feet across a floor; the tink of a china pitcher against its bowl; the slam of a drawer; the rusty squeal of spiral bed-springs under pressure.
"Abie, I'm ready."
When Mr. Ginsburg groped into his mother's room she lay in the casual attitude of sleep, but the yellow patch of light from the shaft fell across her open eyes and gray wisps of hair that lay on her pillow like a sickly aura.
"Good night, Abie. You're a good boy, Abie."
"Good night, mamma. A sheet ain't enough--you got to have the blue-and-white quilt on you, too."
"Don't, Abie--do you want to suffocate me? I can't stand so much. Take off the quilt."
"Your rheumatism, you know, mamma--you'll see how much cooler it will get in the night."
"_Ach_, Abie, leave that window all the way up. So hot, and that boy closes me up like--"
"When the lace curtain blows in it means you're in a draught, mamma--half-way open you can have it, but not all. Without me to fuss you'd have a fine rheumatism--like it ain't dangerous for you to sleep where there's enough draught to blow the curtain in."
"Abie, if you don't feel good, in two minutes I can get up and heat the broth if--"
"I'm grand, mamma. Here, I move this chair so the light from Magintys' don't shine in your eyes."
"What she does in her kitchen so late I don't know. Good night, Abie. In the dark you look like poor papa. How he used to fuss round the room at night fixing me just like you--poor papa, Abie--not? Poor papa?"
"Good night, mamma."
Mr. Ginsburg leaned over and kissed his mother lightly on the forehead.
"Double cream did you say I should write the milkman?"
"Yes--and, Abie, don't forget to cover the bird."
"Yes. Here, I leave the door half-way open, mamma. Good night."
"Abie! Abie!"
"Yes?"
"Oh, it ain't nothing at all, Abie--never mind."
"I'm right here, mamma. Anything you want me to do?"
"Nothing. Good night, Abie."
"Good night, mamma."
* * * * *
At eight-fifteen Monday morning Miss Ruby Cohn blew into the Ginsburg & Son's shoe store like a breath of thirty-nine-cents-an-ounce perfume shot from a strong-spray atomizer. The street hung with the strong breath of Mayflower a full second after her small, tall-heeled feet had crossed its soft asphalt.
At the first whiff Mr. Ginsburg drew the upper half of his body out from a case of misses' ten-button welt soles he was unpacking and smiled as if Aurora and spring, and all the heyday misses that Guido Reni and Botticelli loved to paint, had suddenly danced into his shop.
"Well, well, Miss Ruby, are you back?"
Miss Cohn titillated toward the rear of the store, the tail of a cockatoo titillated at a sharp angle from her hat, a patent-leather handbag titillated from a long cord at her wrist, and a smile iridescent as sunlight on spray played about her lips. She placed her hand blinker-fashion against her mouth as if she would curb the smile.
"Don't tell anybody, Mr. Ginsburg, and I'll whisper you something. Listen! I ain't back; I'm shooting porcelain ducks off the shelf in a china shop."
"Ah, you're back again with your fun, ain't you? Miss Ruby--believe me--I missed you enough. I bet you had a grand time at the farm!"
Mr. Ginsburg shook hands with her shyly, with a sudden red in his face, and as if her fingers were holy with the dust of a butterfly's wings and he feared to brush it off.
"Say, Mr. Ginsburg, you should have seen me! What I think of a shoe-tree after laying all yesterday afternoon under a oak-tree next to a brook that made a noise like playing a tune on wine-glasses, I'd hate to tell you. Say, you're unpacking them ten-button welts, ain't you? Good! It ain't too soon for the school stock."
Miss Cohn withdrew two super-long, sapphire-headed hat-pins from her super-small hat, slid out of a tan summer-silk jacket, dallied with the froth of white frills at her throat, ran her fingers through the flame of her hair and turned to Mr. Ginsburg. Her skin was like thick cream and smattered with large, light-brown freckles, which enhanced its creaminess as a crescent of black plaster laid against a lady's cheek makes fairness fairer.
"Well, how's business? I've come back feeling like I could sell storm rubbers to a mermaid."
"You look grand for certain, Miss Ruby. They just can't look any grander'n you. Believe me, I missed you enough! To-day it's cool; but the day before yesterday you can know I was done up when I closed before six."
"Can you beat it? And I was laying flat on the grass, with ants running up my sleeves and down my neck and wishing for my sealskin--it was so cool. I see Herschey's got cloth-tops in his windows. What's the matter with us springing them patent-tip kids? Say, I got a swell idea for a window comin' home on the train--lookin' at the wheat-fields made me think of it."
"Whatta you know about that? Wheat-fields made her think of a shoe window--like a whip she is--so sharp!"
"It's a yellow season, Mr. Ginsburg; and we can use them old-oak stands and have a tan school window that'll make every plate-glass front between here and One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street look like a Sixth Avenue slightly worn display."