“I tell you what!  I—­this afternoon my Becky, Mrs. Fischlowitz, she—­she ain’t so well and like always can’t take with me a ride in the Park.  Such—­such a cold that girl has got.  How I should like it, Mrs. Fischlowitz, if you would be so kind to—­to take with me my drive in—­in your new coat.”

“I—­”

“Ja, ja, I know, Mrs. Fischlowitz, cheese Kuchen should first get cold before supper, but if you could just an hour ride by me a little?  If you would be so kind, Mrs. Fischlowitz!”

Diffidence ran trembling along Mrs. Meyerburg’s voice, as if she dared not venture too far upon a day blessed with tasks.  “I got always so—­so much time to myself now’days, Mrs. Fischlowitz, sometimes I—­I get maybe a—­a little lonesome.”

“Ach, Mrs. Meyerburg, you don’t want to be bothered with such—­such a person like me when you ride so grand through the Park.”

“Fit like a fiddle it will make you feel, Mrs. Fischlowitz.  Button up tight that collar and right away we start.  Please, right next to you, will you press that third button?  That means we go right down and find outside the car waiting for us.”

“But, Mrs. Meyerburg—­”

“See, just like you, I put on a coat on the inside fur.  This way, Mrs. Fischlowitz.  Careful, your foot!”

In the great lower hall full of Tudor gloom the carved stone arches dropping in rococo stalactites from the ceiling, and a marble staircase blue-veined as a delicate woman’s hand winding up to an oriole window, a man-servant swung back two sets of trellised doors; bowed them noiselessly shut again.

The quick cold of December bit them at the threshold.  Opposite lay the Park, its trees, in their smooth bark whipped bare, and gray as nuns, the sunlight hard against their boles.  More sunlight lay cold and glittering down the length of the most facaded avenue in the world and on the great up-and-down stream of motor-cars and their nickel-plated snouts and plate-glass sides.

Women, with heads too haughty to turn them right or left, moved past in closed cars that were perfumed and upholstered like jewel-boxes; the joggly smartness of hansom cabs, their fair fares seeing and being seen behind the wooden aprons and their frozen laughter coming from their lips in vapor!  On the broad sidewalks women in low shoes that defied the wind, and men in high hats that the wind defied; nursemaids trim as deaconesses, and their charges the beautiful exotic children of pure milk and pure sunshine!

One of these deaconess-like nursemaids, walking out with a child whose black curls lay in wide sprays on each shoulder, detached herself from the up-town flow and crossed to the trellised threshold.

“Good afternoon, Madam Meyerburg.  Mademoiselle, dites bonjour a madame votre grand’maman.”

“Bonjour, grand’maman.”

In the act of descending her steps, Mrs. Meyerburg’s hands flew outward.  “Ach, du little Aileen.  Come, Aileen, to grandma.  Mrs. Fischlowitz, this is Felix’s little girl.  You remember Felix—­such a beautiful bad little boy he was what always used to fight your Sollie underneath the sink.”