“Like moving is so easy, if you got two chairs and a hair mattress to take with you.  But I always say, Mrs. Katz, I don’t blame Mrs. Kaufman herself for what goes on; there’s one good woman if there ever was one!”

“They don’t come any better or any better looking, my husband always says.  ‘S-ay,’ I tell him, ‘she can stand her good looks.’”

“It’s that big-ideaed daughter who’s to blame.  Did you see her new white spats to-night?” Right away the minute they come out she has to have ’em.  I’m only surprised she ’ain’t got one of them red hats from Gimp’s what is all the fad.  Believe me, if not for such ideas, her mother could afford something better as succotash for us for supper.”

“It’s a shame, let me tell you, that a woman like Mrs. Kaufman can’t see for herself such things.  God forbid I should ever be so blind to my Irving.  I tell you that Ruby has got it more like a queen than a boarding-housekeeper’s daughter.  Spats, yet!”

“Rich girls could be glad to have it always so good.”

“I don’t say nothing how her mother treats Vetsburg, her oldest boarder, and for what he pays for that second floor front and no lunches she can afford to cater a little; but that such a girl shouldn’t be made to take up a little stenography or help with the housework!”

“S-ay, when that girl even turns a hand, pale like a ghost her mother gets.”

“How girls are raised nowadays, even the poor ones!”

“I ain’t the one to complain, Mrs. Katz, but just look down there, that red stuff.”

“Where?”

“Ain’t it cranberry between Ruby and Vetsburg?”

“Yes, yes, and look such a dish of it!”

“Is it right extras should be allowed to be brought on a table like this where fourteen other boarders got to let their mouth water and look at it?”

“You think it don’t hurt like a knife!  For myself I don’t mind, but my Irving!  How that child loves ’em, and he should got to sit at the same table without cranberries.”

From the head of the table the flashing implements of carving held in askance for stroke, her lips lifted to a smile and a simulation of interest for display of further carnivorous appetites, Mrs. Kaufman passed her nod from one to the other.

“Miss Arndt, little more?  No?  Mr. Krakower?  Gravy?  Mrs. Suss?  Mr. Suss?  So!  Simon?  Mr. Schloss?  Miss Horowitz?  Mr. Vetsburg, let me give you this little tender—­No?  Then, Ruby, here let mama give you just a little more—­”

“No, no, mama, please!” She caught at the hovering wrist to spare the descent of the knife.

By one of those rare atavisms by which a poet can be bred of a peasant or peasant be begot of poet, Miss Ruby Kaufman, who was born in Newark, posthumous, to a terrified little parent with a black ribbon at the throat of her gown, had brought with her from no telling where the sultry eyes and tropical-turned skin of spice-kissed winds.  The corpuscles of a shah might have been running in the blood of her, yet Simon Kaufman, and Simon Kaufman’s father before him, had sold wool remnants to cap-factories on commission.