“Sure I will!  Old Squash!  Whillikens!”

* * * * *

At five o’clock Wasserman Avenue emerged in dainty dimity and silk sewing-bags.  Rocking-chairs, tiptilted against veranda railings, were swung round front-face.  Greetings, light as rubber balls, bounded from porch to porch.  Fine needles flashed through dainty fabrics stretched like drum parchment across embroidery hoops; young children, shrilling and shouting in the heat of play, darted beneath maternal eyes; long-legged girls in knee-high skirts strolled up and down the sidewalks, arms intertwined.

At five-thirty the sun had got so low that it found out Mrs. Schimm in a shady corner of her porch, dazzled her eyes, and flashed teasingly on her needle, so that she crammed her dainty fabric in her sewing-bag and crossed the paved street.

“You don’t mind, Mrs. Lissman, if I come over on your porch for a while, where it’s shady?”

“It’s a pleasure, Mrs. Schimm.  Come right up and have a rocker.”

“Just a few minutes I can stay.”

“That’s a beautiful stitch, Mrs. Schimm.  When I finish this centerpiece I start me a dozen doilies too.”

“I can learn it to you in five minutes, Mrs. Lissman.  All my Birdie’s trousseau napkins I did with this Battenberg stitch.”

“Grand!”

“For a poor widow’s daughter, Mrs. Lissman, that girl had a trousseau she don’t need to be ashamed of.”

“Look, will you?  Mrs. Shapiro’s coming down her front steps all diked out in a summer silk.  I guess she goes down to have supper with her husband, since he keeps open evenings.”

“I don’t want to say nothing; but I don’t think it’s so nice—­do you, Mrs. Lissman?—­the first month what her mourning for her mother is up a yellow bird of paradise as big as a fan she has to have on her hat.”

“Ain’t it so!”

“I wish you could see the bird of paradise my Birdie bought when her and Simon was in Kansas City on their wedding-trip—­you can believe me or not, a yard long!  How that man spends money on that girl, Mrs. Lissman!”

“Say, when you got it to spend I always say it’s right.  He’s in a good business and makes good money.”

“You should know how good.”

“The rainy days come to them that save up for them, like us old-fashioned ones, Mrs. Schimm.”

“I—­Look, will you?  Ain’t that Izzy Shongut crossing the street?  He comes home from work this early!  I tell you, Mrs. Lissman, I don’t want to say nothing; but I hear things ain’t so good with the Shonguts.”

“So!”

“Yes; I hear, since the old man bought out that sausage concern, they got their troubles.”

“And such a nice woman!  That’s what she needs yet on top of his heart trouble and her girl running round with Sollie Spitz; and, from what she don’t say, I can see that boy causes her enough worry with his wild ways.  That’s what that poor woman needs yet!”