“Mrs. Shongut, you’ll laugh when I tell you; but already in the school my Jeannie gets little notes what the little boys write to her.  Mad it makes me like anything; but what can you do when you got a pretty girl?”

“A young man in Peoria, Mrs. Lissman, such beautiful letters he writes Renie, never in my life did I read.  Such language, Mrs. Lissman; just like out of a song-book!  Not a time my Renie goes out that I don’t go right to her desk to read ’em—­that’s how beautiful he writes.  In Green Springs she met him.”

“Ain’t it a pleasure, Mrs. Shongut, to have grand letters like that?  Even with my little Jeannie, though it makes me so mad, still I—­”

“But do you think my Renie will have any of them?  ‘Not,’ she says, ’if they was lined in gold.’”

“I guess she got plenty beaus.  Say, I ain’t so blind that I don’t see Sollie Spitz on your porch every—­”

“Sollie Spitz!  Ach, Mrs. Lissman, believe me, there’s nothing to that!  My Renie since a little child likes reading and writing like he does.  I tell her papa we made a mistake not to keep her in school like she wanted.”

“My Jeannie—­”

“She loves learning, that girl.  Under her pillow yesterday I found a book of verses about flowers.  Where she gets such a mind, Mrs. Lissman, I don’t know.  But Sollie Spitz!  Say, we don’t want no poets in the family.”

“I should say not!  But I guess she gets all the good chances she wants.”

“And more.  A young man from Cincinnati—­if I tell you his name, right away you know him—­twice her papa brought him out to supper after they had business down-town together—­only twice; and now every week he sends her five pounds—­”

“Just think!”

“And such roses, Mrs. Lissman!  You seen for yourself when I sent you one the other day.  Right in his own hothouse he grows ’em, Mrs. Lissman.”

“Just think!”

“If I tell you his name, Mrs. Lissman, right away you know his firm.  In Cincinnati they say he’s got the finest house up on the hill—­musical chairs, that play when you sit on ’em.  Twice every week he sends her—­”

“Grand!”

“‘I tell you,’ I says to her papa, ’her cousins over in Kingston Place got tickets to take the young men to theaters with and automobiles to ride them round in; but, if I say so myself, not one of them has better chances than my Renie, right here in our little flat.’”

Mrs. Lissman folded her arms in a shelf across her bosom and leaned her ample uncorseted figure against the railing.  “I give you right, Mrs. Shongut.  Look at Jeannette Bamberger, over on Kingston; every night when me and Mr. Lissman used to walk past last summer, right on her grand front porch that girl sat alone, like she was glued.”

“I know.”

“Then look at Birdie Schimm, across the street.  Her mother a poor widow who keeps a roomer, and look how her girl did for herself!  Down at Rindley’s this morning nothing was fine enough for that Birdie to buy for her table.  I tell you, Mrs. Shongut, money ain’t everything in this world.”