“Now, ma, just—­just you begin if you want to make me sore.”

“I tell you, Izzy, I worry enough that you should be on the road so much.  And ain’t it natural, Izzy, when you ain’t away I—­I should like it that you stay by home a lot?  Sit down, anyway, awhile yet till the Shapiro boy comes.”

“Sure I will, ma.”

“If I take a trip away from you this summer I worry, Izzy, and if I stay home I worry.  Anyway I fix it I worry.”

“Now, ma.”

“Only sometimes I feel if your papa feels like he wants to spend the money—­Well, anything is better as that girl should feel so bad that we don’t take her to Europe.”

He jingled a handful of loose coins from his pocket to his palm.  “Cheer up, ma; if the old man will raise my salary I’ll blow you to a wheelbarrow trip through Europe myself.”

“’Sh-h-h-h, Izzy!  Here comes Miriam.  I don’t want you should tease her one more word to make her mad.  You hear?”

In the frame of the doorway, quiescent as an odalisque and with the golden tinge of a sunflower lighting her darkness, Miriam Binswanger held the picture for a moment, her brother greeting her with bow and banter.

“Well, little red-eyes!”

“Izzy, what did I just tell you!”

His sister flashed him a dark glance, reflexly her hand darting upward to her face.  “You!”

“Now, now, children!  Why don’t you and Miriam go in the parlor, Izzy, and sing songs?”

“What you all so cooped up in here for, mamma?  Open the window, Ray; it’s as hot as summer outside.”

“Say, who was your maid this time last year, Miriam?”

“Mamma, you going to let her talk that way to me?”

“Ray, will it hurt you to put up the window like your sister asks?”

“Well, I’m doing it, ain’t I?”

“Now, Miriam, you and Izzy go in the parlor and sing for mamma a little.”

Miriam’s small teeth met in a small click, her voice lay under careful control and as if each nerve was twanging like a plucked violin string.

“Please, mamma, please!  I just can’t sing to-night!”

She was like a Jacque rose, dark and swaying, her little bosom beneath the sheer blouse rising higher than its wont.

“Please, mamma!”

“Ach, now, Miriam!”

“Where’s those steamship pamphlets, mamma, I left laying here on the table?”

“Right here where you left them, Miriam.”

Mr. Isadore Binswanger executed a two-stride dash for the couch, plunging into a nest of pillows and piling them high about his head and ears.

“Go-od night!  The subject of Europe is again on the table for the seventh evening this week.  Nix for mine!  Good night!  Good night!” And he fell to burrowing his head deeper among the pillows.

“You don’t need to listen, Izzy Binswanger.  I wasn’t talking to you, anyways.”

“No, to your mother you was talking—­always to me.  I got to hear it.”