Up-stairs, in a too tufted and too crowded room directly over the frontal half of the store, the window overlooking the remote sea of city was turning taupe, the dusk of early spring, which is faintly tinged with violet, invading.  Beside the stove, a base-burner with faint fire showing through its mica, the identity of her figure merged with the fat upholstery of the chair, except where the faint pink through the mica lighted up old flesh, Mrs. Miriam Horowitz, full of years and senile with them, wove with grasses, the ecru of her own skin, wreaths that had mounted to a great stack in a bedroom cupboard.

A clock, with a little wheeze and burring attached to each chime, rang six, and upon it Mrs. Coblenz, breathing from a climb, opened the door.

“Ma, why didn’t you rap for Katie to come up and light the gas?  You’ll ruin your eyes, dearie.”

She found out a match, immediately lighting two jets of a center-chandelier, turning them down from singing, drawing the shades of the two front and the southeast windows, stooping over the upholstered chair to imprint a light kiss.

“A fine day, mama.  There’ll be an entry this week.  Thirty dollars and thirteen cents and another call for garden implements.  I think I’ll lay in a hardware line after we—­we get back.  I can use the lower shelf of the china-table, eh, ma?”

Mrs. Horowitz, whose face, the color of old linen in the yellowing, emerged rather startling from the still black hair strained back from it, lay back in her chair, turning her profile against the upholstered back, half a wreath and a trail of raffia sliding to the floor.  Age had sapped from beneath the skin, so that every curve had collapsed to bagginess, the cheeks and the underchin sagging with too much skin.  Even the hands were crinkled like too large gloves, a wide, curiously etched marriage band hanging loosely from the third finger.

Mrs. Goblenz stooped, recovering the wreath.

“Say, mama, this one is a beauty!  That’s a new weave, ain’t it?  Here, work some more, dearie—­till Selene comes with your evening papers.”

With her profile still to the chair-back, a tear oozed down the corrugated face of Mrs. Horowitz’s cheek.  Another.

“Now, mama!  Now, mama!”

“I got a heaviness—­here—­inside.  I got a heaviness—­”

Mrs. Coblenz slid down to her knees beside the chair.

“Now, mama; shame on my little mama!  Is that the way to act when Shila comes up after a good day?  ’Ain’t we got just lots to be thankful for—­the business growing and the bank-book growing, and our Selene on top?  Shame on mama!”

“I got a heaviness—­here—­inside—­here.”

Mrs. Coblenz reached up for the old hand, patting it.

“It’s nothing, mama—­a little nervousness.”

“I’m an old woman.  I—­”

“And just think, Shila’s mama, Mark Haas is going to get us letters and passports and—­”