“Don’t it?  Well, then, if you know more about what’s in this letter than I do, I’ve got no more to say.”

Mrs. Shongut sat down as though the power to stand had suddenly deserted her limbs.  “What—­what do you mean, Renie?”

“I’m not so dumb that I—­I don’t know what a fellow means by a letter like this.”

“Renie!” The lines seemed to fade out of Mrs. Shongut’s face, softening it.  “Renie!  My little Renie!”

“You don’t need to my-little-Renie me, mamma; I—­”

“Renie, I can’t believe it—­that such luck should come to us.  A man like Max Hochenheimer, of Cincinnati, who can give her the greatest happiness, comes for our little girl—­”

“I—­”

“Always like me and papa had to struggle, Renie, in money matters you won’t have to.  I tell you, Renie, nothing makes a woman old so soon.  Like a queen you can sit back in your automobile.  Always a man what’s good to his mother, like Max Hochenheimer, makes, too, a grand husband.  I want, Renie, to see your Aunt Becky’s and your cousins’ faces at the reception.  Renie—­I—­”

“Mamma, you talk like—­Oh, you make me so mad.”

“Musical chairs they got in the house, Renie, what, as soon as you sit on, begin to play.  Mrs. Schwartz herself sat on one; and the harder you sit, she says, the louder it plays.  Automobiles; a elevator for his mother!  I—­Ach, Renie, I—­I feel like all our troubles are over.  I—­ Ach, Renie, you should know how it feels to be a mother.”

Tears rained frankly down Mrs. Shongut’s face and she smiled through their mist, and her outstretched arms would tremble.

“Renie, come to mamma!”

Miss Shongut, quivering, drew herself beyond their reach.  “Such talk!  Honest, mamma, you—­you make me ashamed, and mad like anything, too.  I wouldn’t marry a little old squashy fellow like him if he was worth the mint.”

“Renie!  Re-nie!”

“An old fellow, just because he’s got money and—­”

“Old!  Max Hochenheimer ain’t more than in his first thirties, and old she calls him!  When a man makes hisself by hard work he ’ain’t got time to keep young, with silk socks and creased pants, and hair-tonic what smells up my house a hour after Izzy’s been gone.  It ain’t the color of a man’s vest, Renie—­it’s the color of his heart, underneath it.  When papa was a young man, do you think, if I had looked at the cigar ashes on his vest instead of at what was underneath, that I—­”

“That talk’s no use with me, mamma.”

“Renie; you—­you wouldn’t do it—­you wouldn’t refuse him?”

Her reply leaped out suddenly, full of fire:  “It’s not me or my feelings you care anything about.  Every one but me you think about first.  What about me?  What about me?  I’m the one that’s got to do the marrying and live with him.  I’m the one you’re trying to sell off like I was cattle.  I’m the one!  I’m the one!”

“Renie!”