Wasserman Avenue flutters farewell handkerchiefs to its husbands until they turn the corner at Rindley’s West End Meat and Vegetable Market.  At eventide Wasserman Avenue greets its husbands with kisses, frankly delivered on its rows of front porches.

Do not smile.  Gautier wrote about the consolation of the arts; but, after all, he has little enough to say of that cold moment when art leaves off and heart turns to heart.

Most of Wasserman Avenue had never read much of Gautier, but it knew the greater truth of the consolation of the hearth.  When Mrs. Shongut waved farewell to her husband that greater truth lay mirrored in her eyes, which followed him until Rindley’s West End Meat and Vegetable Market shunted him from view.

“Mamma, come in and close the screen door—­you look a sight in that wrapper.”

Mrs. Shongut withdrew herself from the aperture and turned to the sunshine-flooded, mahogany-and-green-velours sitting-room.

“You think that papa seems so well, Renie?  At breakfast this morning he looked so bad underneath his eyes.”

Rena yawned in her rocking-chair and rustled the morning paper.  The horrific caprice of her pores had long since succumbed to the West End balm of Wasserman Avenue.  No rajah’s seventh daughter of a seventh daughter had cheeks more delicately golden—­that fine tinge which is like the glory of sunlight.

“Now begin, mamma, to find something to worry about!  For two months he hasn’t had a heart spell.”

Mrs. Shongut drew a thin-veined hand across her brow.  Her narrow shoulders, which were never held straight, dropped even lower, as though from pressure.

“He don’t say much, but I know he worries enough about that second payment coming due in July and only a month and a half off.  I tell you I knew what I was talking about when I never wanted him to buy out the Mound City.  I was the one who said we was doing better in little business.”

“Now begin, mamma!”

“I told him he couldn’t count on Izzy to stay down in the business with him.  I told him Izzy wouldn’t spoil his white hands by helping his papa in business.”

“I suppose, mamma, you think Izzy should have stayed down with papa when he could get that job with Uncle Isadore.”

“You know why your Uncle Isadore took Izzy?  Because to a strange bookkeeper he has to pay more.  Your Uncle Isadore is my own brother, Renie, but I tell you he ’ain’t never acted like it.”

“That’s what I say.  What have we got rich relatives with a banking-house for, if Izzy can’t start there instead of in papa’s little business?”

“Ya, ya!  What your Uncle Isadore does for Izzy wait and see.  For his own sister he never done nothing, and for his own sister’s son he don’t do nothing, neither.  You seen for yourself, if it was not for Aunt Becky begging him nearly on her knees, how he would have treated us that time with the mortgage.  Better, I say, Izzy should stay with his papa in business or get out West like he wants, and where he can’t keep such fine white hands to gamble with.”