“Brava!  Brava! There’s a woman for you.  More money than she knows what to do with, and then not satisfied!”

She was still too tremulous for banter.

“‘Not satisfied?’ Why, Leon, I never stop praying my thanks for you!”

“All right then,” he cried, laying his icy fingers on her cheek; “to-morrow we’ll call a Mignon—­a regular old-fashioned Allen Street prayer-party!”

“Leon, you mustn’t make fun.”

“Make fun of the sweetest girl in this room?”

“‘Girl!’ Ah, if I could only hold you by me this way, Leon!  Always a boy—­with me—­your poor old mother—­your only girl.  That’s a fear I suffer with, Leon—­to lose you to a—­girl!  That’s how selfish the mother of such a wonder-child like mine can get to be.”

“All right.  Trying to get me married off again.  Nice!  Fine!”

“Is it any wonder I suffer, son?  Twenty-one years to have kept you by me a child.  A boy that’s never in his life was out after midnight except to catch trains.  A boy that never has so much as looked at a girl and could have looked at princesses.  To have kept you all these years—­mine—­is it any wonder, son, I never stop praying my thanks for you?  You don’t believe Hancock, son, the way he keeps teasing you always you should have a—­what he calls—­affair—­a love-affair?  Such talk is not nice, Leon—­an affair!”

“Love-affair poppycock!” said Leon Kantor, lifting his mothers face and kissing her on eyes about ready to tear.  “Why, I’ve got something, ma, right here in my heart for you that—­”

“Leon, be careful your shirt-front!”

“That’s so—­so what you call ‘tender,’ for my best sweetheart that I—­oh, love affair—­poppycock!”

She would not let her tears come.  “My boy—­my wonder-boy!”

“There goes the overture, ma.”

“Here, darlink—­your glass of water.”

“I can’t stand it in here; I’m suffocating!”

“Got your mute in your pocket, son?”

“Yes, ma; for God’s sake, yes!  Yes!  Don’t keep asking things.”

“Ain’t you ashamed, Leon, to be in such an excitement?  For every concert you get worse.”

“The chairs—­they’ll breathe on my neck.”

“Leon, did mamma promise you those chairs would be moved?”

“Where’s Hancock?”

“Say—­I’m grateful if he stays out.  It took me enough work to get this room cleared.  You know your papa he likes to drag in the whole world to show you off—­always just before you play.  The minute he walks in the room, right away he gets everybody to trembling just from his own excitements.  I dare him this time he should bring people—­no dignity has that man got, the way he brings everyone.”

Even upon her words came a rattling of door, of door-knob and a voice through the clamour.

“Open—­quick—­Sarah!  Leon!”

A stiffening raced over Mrs. Kantor, so that she sat rigid on her chair-edge, lips compressed, eye darkly upon the shivering door.