Birdie pulled the comforter up closer about her ears, and the head on the rumpled pillow burrowed deeper.
"And such laziness! I been up two hours with my _Kuechen_ and cheese-pie fixed already for this afternoon, and my daughter sleeps like a lady! The man that gets her I don't envy!"
The pink-and-white mound on the bed heaved like a ship at sea.
"In a minute, mamma!"
Mrs. Katzenstein jerked up a filmy gown from across the back of a chair and held it from her at arm's-length.
"Anybody's too good for a girl that ain't got no order! I wonder what Marcus Gump would say if he knew how you treat your things? Her good pink dress that I paid twenty dollars for the making alone she throws round like it cost nothing! Sack-cloth is too good! I don't put it away--you can wait on yourself."
However, as she spoke Mrs. Katzenstein folded the pink gown, with an avalanche of lace flowing from the bodice, lengthwise in a drawer and smothered it with tissue-paper.
"That a girl like that shouldn't be ashamed to let her poor old mother wait on her!"
"I'd put it away, mamma, if you'd just give me time."
"Tuesday, when I have the ladies and my card party, she sleeps! No consideration that girl has got for her mother!"
Birdie swung herself to the side of the bed; her wealth of crow-blue hair fell over her shoulders; sleep trembled on her lashes.
"I'm up, ain't I? Now are you satisfied?"
"For all the help you are to me you might as well stay in bed the rest of the morning. A girl that can come home from a party and have nothing to say! But for my part I don't want to know. I guess they had a big blow-out, didn't they?"
Birdie, high-chested as Juno, with wide, firm shoulders that sloped as must have sloped the shoulders of Artemis when they tempted Actaeon, coiled her hair before the mirror with the gesture that has belonged to women since first they coiled their hair. Her cheeks, fleshly but fruit-like in their freshness, might have belonged to a buxom nymph of the grove.
"I wish you could have seen the spread Jeanette had, mamma! I brought home the recipe for her lobster chops. I'll bet if she had one she had six different kinds of ice-cream."
With one swoop Mrs. Katzenstein flung the snowy avalanche of pillows and sheets over the footboard of the bed and opened wide both the windows.
"Tillie," she cried, "bring me the broom. I'll start in Miss Birdie's room while you finish the breakfast dishes."
"Such an affair as she had! I said to Marcus, on the way home, it could have been at Delmonico's and not have been finer."
"You don't say so! Such is life, ain't it? We knew Simon Lefkowitz when he used to come to papa and buy for his stock six shirt-waists at a time. Then they didn't live in no eighty-dollar apartment. Many's the morning I used to meet the old lady at market. Who else was there?"
"Who? Let me see! Gertie Glauber was there. She had on that dress Laevitt made; and, believe me, I liked mine better. Tekla Stein and Morris Adler--you know those Adlers in the millinery business?"
"Nice people!"
"You couldn't get a pin between Tekla and him--honest, how that girl worked for him! Selma Blumenthal was there, too, and I must say she looked grand--those eyes of hers and that figure! But what those fellows can see in her so much I don't know. Honest, mamma, she's such a dumbhead she can't talk ten words to a boy."
"Girls don't need so much brains. I always say it scares the men off. Look at Gussie Graudenheimer--high school she had to have yet! What good does it do? Not a thing does that girl have--and her mother worries enough about it, too."
"That's what Marcus says about her--he says she's too smart for him; he says he'd rather have a girl nice and sweet than too smart."
Mrs. Katzenstein leaned her broom in a corner, daubed at the mantelpiece with a flannel cloth, and regarded her daughter surreptitiously through the mirror.
"You had a nice time with Marcus last night? You've been out with him five times and still have nothing to say."
"What's there to say, mamma? He's a fine boy and shows a girl a grand time. Last night it was sleeting just a little, and he had to have a taxi-cab. Honest, it was a shame for the money! Take it from me, Morris Adler walked Tekla. I saw them going to the Subway."
"Well, what's what? Is that the end of it?"
"Aw, mamma, how should I know? I can't read a fellow's mind! All I know is he--he's coming over to-night."
"Don't you bother with putting those slippers away, Birdie; you just lie round and take it easy this morning. When a girl's going to have company in the evening she should rest up--me and Tillie can do this little work."
Birdie wrapped herself in a crimson kimono plentifully splotched with large pink and blue and red and green chrysanthemums and snuggled into a white wicker rocking-chair. Her lips, warmly curved like a child's, were parted in a smile.
"I don't want breakfast," she announced. "Irma Friedman quit it and lost five pounds in two weeks."
"Papa and me were saying last night, Birdie, we aren't in a hurry to get rid of you; but such a young man as Marcus Gump any girl can be lucky to get. Aunt Batta said she heard for sure Loeb Brothers are going to make him manager of their new factory--think once, manager and three thousand a year!--just double his salary! Think of putting a young man like him in that big Newark factory!"
"It's surely grand; but for what does it have to be in a place like Newark?"
"Papa says that boy put March Hare boys' pants on the market for the Loebs. How grand for his mother and all, her a widow, to have such a son! Wasn't I right to invite her this afternoon?"
"I'm the last one to say a word against Marcus. You ought to heard them last night talking on the side about him and his new position he might get--just grand! Jeanette's got a new stitch, mamma. It's not like eyelet or French, but sort of between the two, and grand for centerpieces. I could embroider a dresser-cover in a week."
"I thought I'd have sardines this afternoon instead of cold tongue. For why should I make Mrs. Cohen feel bad that we don't buy at their delicatessen?"
"I'll fix the cut-glass bowl with fruit for the center of the table."
"It's like papa and me said last night, Birdie--a girl makes no mistake when she follows her parents' advice. Marcus Gump's own mother told me when I was introduced to her at Hirsch's yesterday afternoon, you're the first girl he ever took out more than two or three times."
Birdie snuggled deeper in her chair and stretched her arms with the gesture of Aurora greeting the day.
"Mamma," she said, softly, "what do you think he--he said I looked like last night?"
"What?"
"He said--he said--"
Mrs. Katzenstein paused in her dusting.
"He--said--Aw, mamma, I can't go telling it--so silly it sounds."
"_Ach!_ For nonsense I got no time--such silliness for two grown-up children! That gets you nowhere. Plain talking is what does it."
But suddenly the thridding and thudding of Mrs. Katzenstein's machinations died down. It was as if a steamboat had turned off its power and drifted quietly into its slip. She tiptoed to the table and straightened the cover, arranged the shades until they were precisely even one with the other, gave the new-made bed a final pat, and tiptoed to the door.
"I forgot to order my finger-rolls for this afternoon," she said.
* * * * *
At two o'clock guests began to arrive. A heavy sleet clattered against the windows; the sky and the apartment houses across the way were shrouded in cold gray. Birdie drew the shades and tweaked on the electric lights; tables were grouped about the parlor, laid out with decks of cards, pencils and paper, and small glass dishes of candies.
Mother and daughter had emerged from the morning like moths out of a chrysalis. Mrs. Katzenstein's black crepe-de-Chine, with cut-jet trimmings, trailed after her when she walked. She greeted her guests with effulgence and enthusiasm.
"Come right in, Carrie! Tillie, take Mrs. Ginsburg's umbrella. I bet you got your winning clothes on to-day, Carrie; I can always tell it when you wear your willow plume and furs."
Carrie Ginsburg flopped a remonstrating and loose-wristed hand at Mrs. Katzenstein.
"Go 'way! That glass pickle-dish I won at Silverman's three weeks ago is the last luck I had. Your mamma's the winner--ain't she, Birdie? At my house she always carries off the prize. I bet I helped furnish her china-closet."
"You should worry, Mrs. Ginsburg, when your husband owns the Cut-Glass Palace!"
"You can believe me or not, Birdie, but Aaron's that particular if I take so much as a pin-tray out of stock he charges it up! When you get such an honest husband it's almost as bad as the other way. He don't get thanks for it."
"Birdie, take Mrs. Ginsburg in the middle room and help off with her things. Hello, Mrs. Silverman! You're a sight for sore eyes. Why wasn't you down at the Ladies' Auxiliary on Wednesday? It was grand! Doctor Lippman spoke so beautiful, and there was coffee in the Sunday-school rooms after."
Mrs. Silverman deposited a large and elaborate muff on the table and unbuttoned her full-length fur coat.