“Look at Izzy, Mrs. Lissman.  I bet that boy drinks or something.  Look at his face—­like a sheet!  I tell you that boy ain’t walking up this street straight.  Look for yourself, Mrs. Lissman.  Ach, his poor mother!” A current like electricity that sets a wire humming ran in waves along Mrs. Schimm’s voice.  “Look!”

“Oh-oh!  I say, ain’t that a trouble for that poor woman?  When you see other people’s trouble your own ain’t so bad.”

“Ain’t that awful?  Just look at his face!  Ain’t that a trouble for you?”

“She herself as much as told me not a thing does her swell brother over on Kingston do for them.  I guess such a job as that boy has got in his banking-house he could get from a stranger too.”

“’Sh-h-h, Mrs. Lissman!  Here he comes.  Don’t let on like we been talking about him.  Speak to him like always.”

“Good evening, Izzy.”

Isadora Shongut paused in the act of mounting the front steps and turned a blood-driven face toward his neighbor.  His under jaw sagged and trembled, and his well-knit body seemed to have lost its power to stand erect, so that his clothes bagged.

“Good evening, Mrs.—­Lissman.”

“You’re home early to-night, Izzy?”

“Y-yes.”

He fitted his key into the front-door lock, but his hand trembled so that it would not turn; and for a racking moment he stood there vainly pushing a weak knee against the panel, and his breath came out of his throat in a wheeze.

The maid-of-all-work, straggly and down at the heels, answered his fumbling at the lock and opened the door to him.

“You, Mr. Izzy!”

He sprang in like a catamount, clicking the door quick as a flash behind him. “’Sh-h-h!  Where’s ma?”

“Your mamma ain’t home; she went up to Rindley’s.  You ain’t sick, are you, Mr. Izzy?”

A spasm of relief flashed over his face, and he snapped his dry fingers in an agony of nervousness.  “Where’s Renie?  Quick!”

“She’s in her room, layin’ down.  She ain’t goin’ to be home to the supper-party to-night, Mr. Izzy; she—­What’s the matter, Mr. Izzy?”

He was down the hallway in three running bounds and, without the preliminary of knocking, into his sister’s tiny, semi-darkened bedroom, his breathing suddenly filling it.  She sprang from her little chintz-covered bed, where she had flung herself across its top, her face and wrapper rumpled with sleep.

“Izzy!”

“’Sh-h-h!”

“Izzy, what—­where—­Izzy, what is it?”

“’Sh-h-h, for God’s sake!  ’Sh-h!  Don’t let ’em hear, Renie.  Don’t let ’em hear!”

Her swimming senses suddenly seemed to clear.  “What’s happened, Izzy?  Quick!  What’s wrong?”

He clicked the key in the lock, and in the agony of the same dry-fingered nervousness rubbed his hand back and forth across his dry lips.  “Don’t let ’em hear—­the old man or ma—­don’t!”

“Quick!  What is it, Izzy?” She sat down on the edge of the bed, weak.  “Tell me, Izzy; something terrible is wrong.  It—­it isn’t papa, Izzy?  Tell me it isn’t papa.  For God’s sake, Izzy, he—­he ain’t—­”