Across the dividing rail of the Shonguts’ porch a child with a strap of school-books flung over one shoulder ran down the soft terrace, and a woman emerged after her to the topmost step of the veranda, holding her checked apron up about her waist and shielding her eyes with one hand.

“Jeannie!  Jean-nie!”

“Yes’m.”

“Watch out for the street-car crossing, Jeannie.”

“Yes’m.”

“Jean-nie!”

“What?”

“Be sure!”

“Yeh.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Shongut.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Lissman.  Looks like spring!”

“Ain’t it so?  I say to Mr. Lissman this morning, before he went down-town, that he should bring home some grass seed to-night.”

“Ya, ya!  Before you know it now, we got hot summer after such a late spring.”

“I say to my Roscoe that after school to-day he should bring up the rubber-plant out of the cellar.”

“That’s right; use ’em while they’re young, Mrs. Lissman.  When they grow up it’s different.”

“Mrs. Shongut, you should talk!  Only last night I says to my husband, I says, when I seen Miss Renie pass by, ‘Such a pretty girl!’ I tell you, Mrs. Shongut, such a pretty girl and such a fine-looking boy you can be proud of.”

“Ach, Mrs. Lissman, you think so?”

“There ain’t one on the street any prettier than Miss Renie.  ’I tell you, if my Roscoe was ten years older she could have him,’ I says to my husband.”

Mrs. Shongut leaned forward on her broom-handle.  “If I say so myself, Mrs. Lissman, I got good reasons to have pleasure out of my children.  I guess you heard, Mrs. Lissman, what a grand position my Izzy has got with his uncle, of the Isadore Flexner Banking-house.  Bookkeeping in a banking-house, Mrs. Lissman, for a boy like Izzy!”

“I tell you, Mrs. Shongut, if you got rich relations it’s a help.”

“How grand my brother has done for himself, Mrs. Lissman!  Such a house he has built on Kingston Place!  Such a home!  You can see for yourself, Mrs. Lissman, how his wife and daughters drive up sometimes in their automobile.”

“I’m surprised they don’t come more often, Mrs. Shongut; your Renie and them girls, I guess, are grand friends.”

“Ya; and to be in that banking-house is a grand start for my boy.  I always say it can lead to almost anything.  Only I tell him he shouldn’t let fine company make him wild.”

“Ach, boys will be boys, Mrs. Shongut.  Even now it ain’t so easy for me to get make my Roscoe to come in off his roller-skates at night.  My Jeannie I can make mind; but I tell her when she is old enough to have beaus, then our troubles begin with her.”

Mrs. Shongut’s voice dropped into her throat in the guise of a whisper.  “Some time, Mrs. Lissman, when my Renie ain’t home, I want you should come over and I read you some of the letters that girl gets from young men.  So mad she always gets at me if she knows I talk about them.”