“I wouldn’t be surprised she’s fresh with the boys, but, believe me, if she gets the uncle she don’t take the nephew!”

“Say, a clerk in his own father’s hotel like the Markovitches got in Atlantic City ain’t no crime.”

“Her mother has got bigger thoughts for her than that.  For why I guess she thinks her daughter should take the nephew when maybe she can get the uncle herself.  Nowadays it ain’t nothing no more that girls marry twice their own age.”

“I always say I can tell when Leo Markovitch comes down, by the way her mother’s face gets long and the daughter’s gets short.”

“Can you blame her?  Leo Markovitch, with all his monograms on his shirt-sleeves and such black rims on his glasses, ain’t the Rosenthal Vetsburg Hosiery Company, not by a long shot!  There ain’t a store in this town you ask for the No Hole Guaranteed Stocking, right away they don’t show it to you.  Just for fun always I ask.”

“Cornstarch pudding!  Irving, stop making that noise at Mrs. Kaufman!  Little boys should be seen and not heard even at cornstarch pudding.”

“Gott!  Wouldn’t you think, Mrs. Katz, how Mrs. Kaufman knows how I hate desserts that wabble, a little something extra she could give me.”

“How she plays favorite, it’s a shame.  I wish you’d look, too, Mrs. Finshriber, how Flora Proskauer carries away from the table her glass of milk with slice bread on top.  I tell you it don’t give tune to a house the boarders should carry away from the table like that.  Irving, come and take with you that extra piece cake.  Just so much board we pay as Flora Proskauer.”

The line about the table broke suddenly, attended with a scraping of chairs and after-dinner chirrupings attended with toothpicks.  A blowsy maid strained herself immediately across the strewn table and cloying lamb platter, and turned off two of the three gas jets.

In the yellow gloom, the odors of food permeating it, they filed out and up the dim lit stairs into dim-lit halls, the line of conversation and short laughter drifting after.

A door slammed.  Then another.  Irving Katz leaped from his third floor threshold to the front hearth, quaking three layers of chandeliers.  From Morris Krakower’s fourth floor back the tune of a flute began to wind down the stairs.  Out of her just-closed door Mrs. Finshriber poked a frizzled gray head.

“Ice-water, ple-ase, Mrs. Kauf-man.”

At the door of the first floor back Mrs. Kaufman paused with her hand on the knob.

“Mama, let me run and do it.”

“Don’t you move, Ruby.  When Annie goes up to bed it’s time enough.  Won’t you come in for a while, Mr. Vetsburg?”

“Don’t care if I do”.

She opened the door, entering cautiously.  “Let me light up, Mrs. Kaufman.”  He struck a phosphorescent line on the sole of his shoe, turning up three jets.

“You must excuse, Mr. Vetsburg, how this room looks.  All day we’ve been sewing Ruby her new dress.”