“Now, mother!” said Nicholas, and rose to stand behind her chair, holding her poor, quavering chin in the cup of his hand.  “Come, one rainy Sunday is enough.  Let’s not have an indoor as well as an outdoor storm.  Come along.  Didn’t I hear Miss Ada play the piano one evening over at Leo’s?  Up-see-la!  Who said you weren’t my favorite dancing partner?” and waltzed her, half dragging back, toward the parlor.  “Come, some music!”

There were the usual demurrings from Ada, rather prettily pink, and Mrs. Turkletaub, with the threat of sobs swallowed, opening the upright piano to dust the dustless keyboard with her apron, and Nicholas, his sagging pipe quickly supplied with one of the rose-twined cuspidors for ash receiver, hunched down in the pink-velour armchair of enormous upholstered hips.

The “Turkish Patrol” was what Ada played, and then, “Who Is Sylvia?” and sang it, as frailly as a bird.

At one o’clock there was dinner, that immemorial Sunday meal of roast chicken with its supplicating legs up off the platter; dressing to be gouged out; sweet potatoes in amber icing; a master stroke of Mrs. Turkletaub’s called “matzos klose,” balls of unleavened bread, sizzling, even as she served them, in a hot butter bath and light-brown onions; a stuffed goose neck, bursting of flavor; cheese pie twice the depth of the fork that cut in; coffee in large cups.  More cracking of nuts, interspersed with raisins.  Ada, cunningly enveloped in a much-too-large apron, helping Mrs. Turkletaub to clear it all away.

Smoking there in his chair beside the dining-room window, rain the unrelenting threnody of the day, Nicholas, fed, closed his eyes to the rhythm of their comings and goings through the swinging door that led to the kitchen.  Comings—­and—­goings—­his mother who rustled so cleanly of starch—­Ada—­clear—­yes, that was it—­clear as a mountain stream.  Their small laughters—­comings—­goings—­

It was almost dusk when he awoke, the pink-shaded piano lamp already lighted in the parlor beyond, the window shade at his side drawn and an Afghan across his knees.  It was snug there in the rosied dusk.  The women were in the kitchen yet, or was it again?  Again, he supposed, looking at his watch.  He had slept three hours.  Presently he rose and sauntered out.  There was coffee fragrance on the air of the large white kitchen, his mother hunched to the attitude of wielding a can opener, and at the snowy oilclothed table, Ada, slicing creamy slabs off the end of a cube of Swiss cheese.

“Sleepyhead,” she greeted, holding up a sliver for him to nibble.

And his mother:  “That was a good rest for you, son?  You feel better?”

“Immense,” he said, hunching his shoulders and stretching his hands down into his pockets in a yawny well-being.

“I wish, then, you would put another leaf in the table for me.  There’s four besides your father coming over from Aunt Gussie’s.  I just wish you would look at Ada.  For a girl that don’t have to turn her hand at home, with two servants, and a laundress every other week, just look how handy she is with everything she touches.”