“I always tell Renie she can take her place with the best of them.”

“Washing?”

“An hour already my Lizzie has been down in the laundry.”

“Half a day I take Addie to help with the ironing.”

“You should watch her, Mrs. Lissman; she steals soap.”

“They’re all alike.”

“Ah, the mailman.  Always in my family no one gets letters but my Renie.  Look, Mrs. Lissman!  What did I tell you?  Another one from Cincinnati.  Renie!  Renie!” Mrs. Shongut bustled indoors, leaving her broom indolent against the porch pillar.  “Renie!”

“Yes, mamma.”

“Letter!” Feet hurrying down the hall.  “Letter from Cincinnati, Renie.”

“Mamma, do you have to read the postmarks off my letters?  I can read my own mail without any help.”

“How she sasses her mother!  Say, for my part, I should worry if you get letters or not.  A girl that is afraid to give her mother a little pleasure!”

Mrs. Shongut made a great show of dragging the room’s furniture back into place; unpinning the lace curtains and draping them carefully in their folds; drawing chairs across the carpet until the casters squealed; uncovering the piano.  At the business of dusting the mantelpiece she lingered, stealing furtive glances through its mirror.

Miss Shongut ripped open the letter with a hairpin and curled her supple figure in a roomy curve of the divan.  Her hair, unloosened, fell in a thick, black cascade down her back.

Mrs. Shongut redusted the mantel, raising each piece of bric-a-brac carefully; ran her cloth across the piano keys, giving out a discord; straightened the piano cover; repolished the mantelpiece mirror.

Her daughter read, blew the envelope open at its ripped end and inserted the letter.  Her eyes, gray as dawn, met her mother’s.

“Well, Renie, is—­is he well?”

Silence.

“You’re afraid, I guess, it gives me a little pleasure if I know what he has to say.  A girl gets a letter from a man like Max Hochenheimer, of Cincinnati, and sits like a funeral!”

Rena unfolded herself from the divan and slid to her feet, slim as a sibyl.

“I knew it!”

“Knew what?”

“He’s coming!”

“Coming?  What?”

“He left Cincinnati last night and gets here this morning.”

“This morning!”

“He comes on business, he says.  And at five o’clock he stops in at the store and comes home to supper with papa.”

“Supper—­and a regular wash-day meal I got!  Tongue sweet-sour, and red cabbage!  Renie, get on your things and—­”

“Honest, if it wasn’t too late I would telegraph him I ain’t home.”

“Get on your things, Renie, and go right down to Rindley’s for a roast.  If you telephone they don’t give you weight.  This afternoon I go myself for the vegetables.”  Excitement purred in Mrs. Shongut’s voice.  “Hurry, Renie!”