“I’ll get Izzy to take me out to supper and to a show.”

“Get on your things, I say, Renie.  I’ll call Lizzie up-stairs too; we don’t need no wash-day, with company for supper.  Honest, excited like a chicken I get.  Hurry, Renie!”

Miss Shongut stood quiescent, however, gazing through the lace curtains at the sun-lashed terrace, still soft from the ravages of winter and only faintly green.  A flush spread to the tips of her delicate ears.

“Izzy’s got to take me out to supper and a show.  I won’t stay home.”

“Renie, you lost your mind?  You!  A young man like Max Hochenheimer begins to pay you attentions in earnest—­a man that could have any girl in this town he snaps his finger for—­a young man what your stuck-up cousins over on Kingston would grab at!  You—­you—­Ach, to a man like Max Hochenheimer, of Cincinnati, she wants to say she ain’t home yet!”

“Him!  An old fatty like him!  Izzy calls him Old Squash!  Izzy says he’s the only live Cartoon in captivity.”

“Izzy—­always Izzy!  Believe me, your brother could do better than layin’ in bed at eight o’clock in the morning, to copy after Max Hochenheimer.”

“Always running down Izzy!  Money ain’t everything.  I—­I like other things in a man besides money—­always money.”

“Believe me, he has plenty besides money, has Max Hochenheimer.  He ’ain’t got no time maybe for silk socks and pressed pants, but for a fine good man your papa says he ’ain’t got no equal.  Your brother Izzy, I tell you, could do well to mock after Max Hochenheimer—­a man what made hisself; a man what built up for hisself in Cincinnati a business in country sausages that is known all over the world.”

“Country sausages!”

“No; he ’ain’t got no time for rhymes like that long-haired Sollie Spitz, that ain’t worth his house-room and sits until by the nightshirt I got to hold papa back from going out and telling him we ’ain’t got no hotel!  Max Hochenheimer is a man what’s in a legitimate business.”

“Please, mamma, keep quiet about him.  I don’t care if he—­”

“I tell you the poultry and the sausage business maybe ain’t up to your fine ideas; but believe me, the poultry business will keep you in shoes and stockings when in the poetry business you can go barefoot.”

“All right, mamma; I won’t argue.”

“Your papa has had enough business with Max Hochenheimer to know what kind of a man he is and what kind of a firm.  Such a grand man to deal with, papa says.  Plain as a old shoe—­just like he was a salesman instead of the president of his firm.  A poor boy he started, and now such a house they say he built for his mother in Avondale on the hill!  Squashy!  I only wish for a month our Izzy had his income.”

“I wouldn’t marry him if—­”

“Don’t be so quick with yourself, missy.  Just because he comes here on a day’s business and then comes out to supper with papa don’t mean so much.”