Ray danced to her feet, tossing her hair backward in maenadic waves, her hands outflung, her voice a taunt and a singsong.  “I know!  I know!  You’re sore because you’re four years older and you’re afraid I’ll get engaged first.  Engaged first!  I know!  I know!”

“Go to it, sis!”

“Sure, I got a Brighton date every Saturday night this summer, missy, and with a slick little fellow that can take his father’s car out every Tuesday night without asking.  Eddie Sollinger!  I guess you call him a snip, too, because he’s a city salesman.  I know!  I know!  Ha!  I should worry that the Lillianthals are going to Europe!  I know!  I know!” She pirouetted to her father’s side of the table.  “Give me a dollar, pa?”

Mrs. Binswanger held out a remonstrating hand.  “Ach, Ray, you mustn’t—­”

“It ain’t even seven yet.  Have a heart, ma!  Gee! can’t I walk up to the corner with Bella Mosher for a soda?  Do I have to stick round this fuss nest?  I’ll be back in a half-hour, ma.  Please?”

“Don’t let her go, ma.”

“You shut up, Izzy!”

“Ach, Ray, I—­”

“Give me the dollar, pa, for voting against Europe.  Don’t let her hypnotize you like she always does.  Down with Europe!  I say.  We should cross the ocean and get our feet wet, eh, pa?”

He waggled a pinch of her flushed cheek between his thumb and forefinger and dived into his pocket.

“Baby-la, you!” he said, crossing her palm; and she was out and past him, imprinting a kiss on the crest of the bald horseshoe and tossing a glance as quick as Pierrette’s over one shoulder.

On the echo of the slamming door, her eyes shining with conviction and her face suddenly old with prophecy, Miriam turned upon her mother.

“You see, mamma, you see!  Seventeen, and nothing in her head but Brighton Beach and soda-water fountains and joy-riding.  Just you watch; some day she’ll meet up with some dinky fakir or ribbon clerk at one of those places, and the first thing you know for a son-in-law you’ll have a crook.”

“Miriam!”

“Yes, you will!  Those are the only chances a girl gets if she’s not in the swim.”

“Listen to her, ma, and then you blame me for not bringing any of the fellows round here for her to meet.  You don’t catch me doing it, the way she thinks she’s better than they are and gives them the high hand.  Not muchy!”

“I should worry for the kind you bring, Izzy.”

“As nice boys Izzy has brought home, Miriam, as ever in my life I would want to meet.”

“Yes, but you see for yourself the way the society fellows, like Sol Blumenthal and Laz Herzog, hang round the Lillianthal girls.  I always got to take a back seat, and maybe you think I don’t know it.”

“I never heard that on ships young men was so plentiful.”

“She wants to land an Italian count and she’ll just about land a barber.”

Mr. Binswanger peered suddenly over the rim of his paper.  “A no-count yet is what we need in the family.  Get right away such ideas out your head.  All my life I ’ain’t worked so hard to spend my money on the old country.  In America I made it and in America I spend it.  Now just stop it, right away, too.”