“Twenty-five rooms!  Did you hear that, Adolph?  Twenty-five rooms!  I bet, Mr. Hochenheimer, your mother is proud of such a son as can give her twenty-five rooms.”

“We don’t say much about it to each other, my mother and me; but—­you can believe me or not—­in our big, stylish house up there on the hill, with her servants to take away from her all the pleasure of work and her market and old friends down on Richmond Street yet, and nothing but gold furniture round her, she gets lonesome enough.  If it wasn’t for my garden and the beautiful scenery from my terraces, I would wish myself back in our little down-town house more than once, too.  I tell you, Mrs. Shongut, fineness ain’t everything.”

“You should bring your mother some time to Mound City with you when you come over on business, Mr. Hochenheimer.  We would do our best to make it pleasant for her.”

“She’s an old woman, Mrs. Shongut, and in a train or an automobile I can’t get her.  I guess it would be better, Mrs. Shongut, if I carry off some of your family with me to Cincinnati.”

And, to belie that his words had any glittering import, he lay back in his chair in a state of silent laughter, which set his soft-fleshed cheeks aquiver; and his blue eyes, so ready yet so reluctant, disappeared behind a tight squint.

“Adolph, I guess Mr. Hochenheimer will excuse us—­eh?  Renie, you can entertain Mr. Hochenheimer while me and papa go and spend the evening over at Aunt Meena’s.  Mr. Shongut’s sister, Mr. Hochenheimer, ’ain’t been so well.  Anyways, I always say young folks ’ain’t got no time for old ones.”

“You go right ahead along, Mrs. Shongut.  Don’t treat me like company.  I hope Miss Renie don’t mind if I spend the evening?”

“I should say not.”

“Hochenheimer, a cigar?”

“Thanks; I don’t smoke.”

“My husband, with his heart trouble, shouldn’t smoke, neither, Mr. Hochenheimer; it worries me enough.  What me and the doctors tell him goes in one ear and out of the other.”

“See, Hochenheimer, when you get a wife how henpecked you get!”

“A henpeck never drew much blood, Shongut.”

“Come, Adolph; it is a long car-ride to Meena’s.”

They pushed back from the table, the four of them, smiling-lipped.  With his short-fingered, hairy-backed hands Mr. Hochenheimer dusted at his coat lapels, then shook his bulging trousers knees into place.

The lamp of inner sanctity burns in strange temples.  A carpenter in haircloth shirt first turned men’s hearts outward.  Who can know, who does not first cross the plain of the guide with gold, that behind the moldy panels at Ara Coeli reigns the jeweled bambino, robed in the glittering gems of sacrifice?

Who could know, as Mr. Hochenheimer stood there in the curtailed dignity of his five feet five, that behind his speckled and slightly rotund waistcoat a choir sang of love, and that the white flame of his spirit burned high?