On her knees before an oven that billowed forth hotly into her face, Mrs. Kantor, fairly fat and not yet forty, and at the immemorial task of plumbing a delicately swelling layer-cake with broom-straw, raised her face, reddened and faintly moist.

“Isadore, run down and say your papa is out until six.  If it’s a customer, remember the first asking-price is the two middle figures on the tag, and the last asking-price is the two outside figures.  See once, with your papa out to buy your little brother his birthday present, and your mother in a cake, if you can’t make a sale for first price.”

Isadore Kantor, aged eleven and hunched with a younger Kantor over an oilcloth-covered table, hunched himself still deeper in barter for a large crystal marble with a candy stripe down its center.

“Izzie, did you hear me?”

“Yes’m.”

“Go down this minute—­do you hear?  Rudolph, stop always letting your big brother get the best of you in marbles.  Iz-zy!”

“In—­a—­minute.”

“Don’t let me have to ask you again, Isadore Kantor!”

“Aw, ma; I got some ’rithmetic to do.  Let Esther go.”

“Always Esther!  Your sister stays right in the front room with her spelling.”

“Aw, ma; I got spelling, too.”

“Every time I ask that boy he should do me one thing, right away he gets lessons!  With me, that lessons-talk don’t go no more.  Every time you get put down in school, I’m surprised there’s a place left lower where they can put you.  Working-papers for such a boy like you!”

“I’ll woik—­”

“How I worried myself!  Violin lessons yet—­thirty cents lesson out of your papa’s pants while he slept!  That’s how I wanted to have in the family a profession—­maybe a musician on the violin.  Lessons for you out of money I had to lie to your papa about!  Honest, when I think of it—­my own husband—­it’s a wonder I don’t potch you just for remembering it.  Rudolph, will you stop licking that cake-pan?  It’s saved for your little brother Leon.  Ain’t you ashamed even on your little brother’s birthday to steal from him?”

“Ma, gimme the spoon?”

“I’ll give you the spoon, Isadore Kantor, where you don’t want it.  If you don’t hurry down the way that bell is ringing, not one bite out of your little brother’s birthday-cake to-night!”

“I’m goin’, ain’t I?”

“Always on my children’s birthdays a meanness sets into this house!  Ru-dolph, will you put down that bowl?  Iz-zy—­for the last time I ask you—­for the last time—­”

Erect now, Mrs. Kantor lifted a portentous hand, letting it hover.

“I’m goin’, ma; for golly sakes, I’m goin’!” said her recalcitrant one, shuffling off toward the staircase, shuffling, shuffling.

Then Mrs. Kantor resumed her plumbing, and through the little apartment, its middle and only bedroom of three beds and a crib lighted vicariously by the front room and kitchen, began to wind the warm, the golden-brown fragrance of cake in the rising.