“Tired, mommy?”

“Always around Easter spring fever right away gets hold of me!”

Mr. Vetsburg bit his cigar, slumped deeper; and inserted a thumb in the arm of his waistcoat.

“Why, Mrs. Kaufman, don’t you and Ruby come down by Atlantic City with me to-morrow over Easter?  Huh?  A few more or less don’t make no difference to my sister the way they get ready for crowds.”

Miss Kaufman shot forward, her face vivid.

“Oh, Vetsy,” she cried, and a flush rushed up, completely dyeing her face.  His face lit with hers, a sunburst of fine lines radiating from his eyes.

“Eh?”

“Why—­why, we—­we’d just love it, wouldn’t we, ma?  Atlantic City, Easter Day!  Ma!”

Mrs. Kaufman sat upright with a whole procession of quick emotions flashing their expressions across her face.  They ended in a smile that trembled as she sat regarding the two of them.

“I should say so, yes!  I—­You and Ruby go, Mr. Vetsburg.  Atlantic City, Easter Day, I bet is worth the trip.  I—­You two go, I should say so, but you don’t want an old woman to drag along with you.”

“Ma!  Just listen to her, Vetsy!  Ain’t she—­ain’t she just the limit?  Half the time when we go in stores together they take us for sisters, and then she—­she begins to talk like that to get out of going!”

“Ruby don’t understand; but it ain’t right, Mr. Vetsburg, I should be away over Saturday and Sunday.  On Easter always they expect a little extra, and with Annie’s sore ankle, I—­I—­”

“Oh, mommy, can’t you leave this old shebang for only two days just for an Easter Sunday down at Atlantic, where—­where everybody goes?”

“You know yourself, Ruby, how always on Annie’s Sunday out—­”

“Well, what of it?  It won’t hurt all of them old things upstairs that let you wait on them hand and foot all year to go without a few frills for their Easter dinner.”

“Ruby!”

“I mean it.  The old gossip-pots!  I just sat and looked at them there at supper, and I said to myself, I said, to think they drown kittens and let those poor lumps live!”

“Ruby, aren’t you ashamed to talk like that?”

“Sat there and looked at poor old man Katz with his ear all ragged like it had been chewed off, and wondered why he didn’t just go down to Brooklyn Bridge for a high jump.”

“Ruby, I—­”

“If all those big, strapping women, Suss and Finshriber and the whole gang of them, were anything but vegetables, they’d get out and hustle with keeping house, to work some of their flabbiness off and give us a chance to get somebody in besides a chocolate-eating, novel-reading crowd of useless women who think, mommy, you’re a dumbwaiter, chambermaid, lady’s maid, and French chef rolled in one!  Honest, ma, if you carry that ice-water up to Katz to-night on the sly, with that big son of hers to come down and get it, I—­I’ll go right up and tell her what I think of her if she leaves to-morrow.”