At the left of the table Genevieve Hassiebrock, with thirteen’s crab-like silhouette of elbow, rigid plaits, and nose still hitched to the star of her nativity, wound an exceedingly long arm about Miss Hassiebrock’s trim waist-line.

“I got B in de-portment to-day, Loo.  You owe me the wear of your spats Sunday.”

Miss Hassiebrock squeezed the hand at her waist.

“All right, honey.  Cut Loo a piece of bread.”

“Gussie Flint’s mother scalded her leg with the wash-boiler.”

“Did she?  Aw!”

Mrs. Hassiebrock came then, limping around, tilting the contents of the steaming pot to a plate.

“Sit down, ma; don’t bother.”

Miss Hassiebrock drew up, pinning a fringed napkin that stuck slightly in the unfolding across her shining expanse of shirtwaist.  Broke a piece of bread.  Dipped.

Silence.

“Paula Krausnick only got C in de-portment.  When the monitor passed the basin, she dipped her sponge soppin’-wet.”

“Anything new, ma?”

Mrs. Hassiebrock, now at the sink, swabbed a dish with gray water.

“My feet’s killin’ me,” she said.

Miss Ida Bell, who wore her hair in a coronet wound twice round her small head, crossed her knife and fork on her plate, folded her napkin, and tied it with a bit of blue ribbon.

“I think it’s a shame, ma, the way you keep thumping around in your stocking feet like this was backwoods.”

“I can’t get my feet in shoes—­the joints—­”

“You thump around as much as you darn please, ma.  If Ida Bell don’t like the looks of you, let her go home with some of her swell stenog friends.  You let your feet hurt you any old way you want ’em to.  I’m going to buy you some arnica.  Pass the kohlrabi.”

“Well, my swell ‘stenog friends,’ as you call them, keep themselves self-respecting girls without getting themselves talked about, and that’s more than I can say of my sister.  If ma had the right kind of gumption with you, she’d put a stop to it, all right.”

Mrs. Hassiebrock leaned her tired head sidewise into the moist palm of her hand.

“She’s beyond me and the days when a slipper could make her mind.  I wisht to God there was a father to rule youse!”

“I tell you, ma—­mark my word for it—­if old man Brookes ever finds out I’m sister to any of the crowd that runs with Charley Cox and Willie Waxter and those boys whose fathers he’s lawyer for, it’ll queer me for life in that office—­that’s what it will.  A girl that’s been made confidential stenographer after only one year in an office to have to be afraid, like I am, to pick up the morning’s paper.”

“Paula Krausnick’s lunch was wrapped in the paper where Charley Cox got pinched for speedin’—­speedin’—­speedin’—­”

“Shut up, Genevieve!  Just don’t you let my business interfere with yours, Ida Bell.  Brookes don’t know you’re on earth outside of your dictation-book.  Take it from me, I bet he wouldn’t know you if he met you on the street.”