“Selene!”

“Well, they do.  You—­you’re all right, mama, as up to date as any of them, but how do you think a girl feels, with gramaw always harping right in front of everybody the way granpa was a revolutionist and was hustled off barefooted to Siberia like a tramp?  And the way she was cooking black beans when my uncle died.  Other girls’ grandmothers don’t tell everything they know.  Alma Yawitz’s grandmother wears lorgnettes, and you told me yourself they came from nearly the same part of the Pale as gramaw.  But you don’t hear them remembering it.  Alma Yawitz says she’s Alsace-Lorraine on both sides.  People don’t tell everything they know.  Anyway where a girl’s got herself as far as I have!”

Through sobs that rocked her, Mrs. Coblenz looked down upon her daughter.

“Your poor old grandmother don’t deserve that from you!  In her day she worked her hands to the bone for you.  With the kind of father you had we might have died in the gutter but for how she helped to keep us out, you ungrateful girl—­your poor old grandmother, that’s suffered so terrible!”

“I know it, mama, but so have other people suffered.”

“She’s old, Selene—­old.”

“I tell you it’s the way you indulge her, mama.  I’ve seen her sitting here as perk as you please, and the minute you come in the room down goes her head like—­like she was dying.”

“It’s her mind, Selene—­that’s going.  That’s why I feel if I could only get her back.  She ain’t old, gramaw ain’t.  If I could only get her back where she—­could see for herself—­the graves—­is all she needs.  All old people think of—­the grave.  It’s eating her—­eating her mind.  Mark Haas is going to fix it for me after the war—­maybe before—­if he can.  That’s the only way poor gramaw can live—­or die—­happy, Selene.  Now—­now that my—­my little girl ain’t any longer my responsibility, I—­I’m going to take her back—­my little—­girl”—­her hand reached out, caressing the smooth head, her face projected forward and the eyes yearning down—­“my all.”

“It’s you will be my responsibility now, ma.”

“No!  No!”

“The first thing Lester says was a flat on Wasserman and a spare room for Mother Coblenz when she wants to come down.  Wasn’t it sweet for him to put it that way right off, ma?  ‘Mother Coblenz,’ he says.”

“He’s a good boy, Selene.  It’ll be a proud day for me and gramaw.  Gramaw mustn’t miss none of it.  He’s a good boy and a fine family.”

“That’s why, mama, we—­got to—­to do it up right.”

“Lester knows, child, he’s not marrying a rich girl.”

“A girl don’t have to—­be rich to get married right.”

“You’ll have as good as mama can afford to give it to her girl.”

“It—­it would be different if Lester’s uncle and all wasn’t in the Acme Club crowd, and if I hadn’t got in with all that bunch.  It’s the last expense I’ll ever be to you, mama.”