“You could live with us, ma dearie.  Paris in season and the estate in winter.  You—­you could run the big estate for us, ma, order and—­”

“You heard what I said, Becky.”

“Well, then, ma, why—­why don’t you get the Memorial out of your head, dear?  Pa built his own Memorial, ma.  His memory lasts with everybody, anyway.”

Aspen trembling laid hold of Mrs. Meyerburg, muddling her words.  “You—­ach—­from her dead father yet she would take away the marble to his memory.”

“Ma!”

“Ja, the marble to his memory!  Bad girl, you!  A man what lifted up with his hands those that came after so that hardly on the ground they got to put a foot.  And now du—­du what gives him no thanks!  A Memorial to her papa, a Home for the Old and Poor what he always dreamed of building, she begrudges, she begrudges!”

“No, no, mamma, you don’t understand!”

“A man what loved so the poor while he lived, shouldn’t be able to do for the poor after he is dead too.  You go, you bad girl you, to your grand nobleman what won’t take you if you ain’t worth every inch your weight in gold, you—­”

“Mamma—­mamma, if you don’t stop your terrible talk I—­I’ll faint, I tell you!”

“You go and your brother Felix and his fine wife with you, for the things what money can buy.  You got such madness for money, sometimes like wolfs you all feel to me breathing on my back, you go and—­”

“I tell you if—­if you don’t stop that terrible talk I—­I’ll faint, I will!  Oh, why don’t I die—­why—­why—­why?”

“Since the day what he died every hour I’ve lived for the time when, with my children provided for, I could spend the rest of my days building to a man what deserved it such a monument as he should have.  A Home for the Old and Poor with a park all around, where they can sit all day in the sun.  All ready I got the plans in my room to send them down by Goldfinger this afternoon he should go right ahead and—­”

“Mamma, mamma, please listen—­”

But the voice of Mrs. Meyerburg rose like a gale and her face was slashed with tears.  “If my last cent it takes and on the streets I go to beg, up such a Memorial goes.  All you children with your feet up on his shoulders can turn away from his memory now he’s gone, but up it goes if on the day what I die I got to dig dirt with my finger-nails to pay yet for my coffin.”

“Listen, ma; just be calm a minute—­just a minute.  I don’t mean that.  Didn’t I just say he was the grandest father in the world and—­”

“You said—­”

“’Sh-h-h, mamma!  Quiet, quiet!  There isn’t one of the boys wouldn’t agree with me if they knew.  We aren’t big enough, I tell you, to sink a million in an out-of-town charity like that.  In any charity, for that matter, no matter how big it shows up.  You say yourself a million and a half will cripple you.  Well, your first duty is to us living and not to him dead—­To us living!  It means my whole life, my whole life!” And she beat the pillow with hard fists.