“Aw, papa!”

“A little teasing from her old father she can’t take.  Look at her, mamma!  Look at both of them—­red like beets.  Neither of them can stand a little teasing from an old man.”

“Adolph, you mustn’t!  All people don’t like it when you make fun.  Mr. Hochenheimer, you must excuse my husband; a great one he is to tease and make his little fun.”

Mr. Shongut’s ancient-looking face, covered with a short, grizzled growth of beard and pale as a prophet’s beneath, broke into a smile, and a minute network of lines sprang out from the corners of his eyes.

“I was bashful in my life once, too—­eh, mamma?”

“Papa!”

“Please, you must excuse my husband, Mr. Hochenheimer; he likes to have his little jokes.”

Mr. Hochenheimer pushed away his plate in high embarrassment; nor would his eyes meet Miss Shongut’s, except to flash away under cover of exaggerated imperturbability.

“My husband’s a great one to tease, Mr. Hochenheimer.  My Izzy too, takes after him.  I’m sorry that boy ain’t home, so you could meet him again.  We call him the dude of the family.  Renie, pass Mr. Hochenheimer the toothpicks.”

A pair of deep-lined brackets sprang out round Mr. Shongut’s mouth.  “Why ain’t that boy home for supper, where he belongs?”

“Ach, now, Adolph, don’t get excited right away.  Always, Mr. Hochenheimer, my husband gets excited over nothing, when he knows how it hurts his heart.  Like that boy ain’t old enough to stay out to supper when he wants, Adolph!  ’Sh-h-h!”

Mrs. Shongut smiled to conceal that her heart was faint, and the saga of a mother might have been written round that smile.

“Now, now, Adolph, don’t you begin to worry.”

“I tell you, Shongut, it’s a mistake to worry.  I save all my excitement for the good things in life.”

“See, Adolph; from a young man like Mr. Hochenheimer you can get pointers.”

“I tell you, Shongut, over such a nice little home and such a nice little family as you got I might get excited; but over the little things that don’t count for much I ’ain’t got time.”

Mrs. Shongut waved a deprecatory hand.  “It’s a nice enough little home for us, Mr. Hochenheimer, but with a grand house like I hear you built for your mother up on the stylish hilltop in Cincinnati, I guess to you it seems right plain.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Mrs. Shongut.  Like I says to Shongut coming out on the street-car with him to-night, if it hadn’t been that I thought maybe my mother would like a little fanciness after a hard life like hers, for my own part a little house and a big garden is all I ask for.”

“Ach, Mr. Hochenheimer, with such a grand house like that is—­sunk-in baths Mrs. Schwartz says you got!  To see a house like that, I tell you it must be a treat.”

“It’s a fine place, Mrs. Shongut, but too big for me and my mother.  When I got into the hands of architects, let me tell you, I feel I was lucky to get off with only twenty-five rooms.  Right now, Mrs. Shongut, we got rooms we don’t know how to pronounce.”