“Gott in Himmel, so this is Felix’s little girl!”

“Ja, this is already his second.  Come, Aileen, to grandma and say good afternoon to the lady.”

The maid guided the small figure forward by one shoulder. “Dites bonjour a madame, Mademoiselle Aileen.”

“Bonjour, madame.”

“Not a word of English she can speak yet, Mrs. Fischlowitz.  I tell you already my grandchildren are so smart not even their language I can understand. Aber for why such a child should only talk so in her own country she can’t be understood, I don’t know.”

“I guess, Mrs. Meyerburg, it’s style now’days that you shouldn’t know your own language.”

“Come by grandma to-morrow, Aileen, and upstairs I got in the little box sweet cakes like grandma always keeps for you.  Eh, baby?”

“Say thank you, grandmother.”

“Merci bien, grand’maman.”

And they were off into the stream again, the small white leggings at a smart trot.

At the curb a low-bodied, high-power car, with the top flung back and the wind-shield up, lay sidled against the coping.

“Get right in, Mrs. Fischlowitz.  Burk, put under Mrs. Fischlowitz’s both feet a heater.”

A second man, in too-accentuated livery of mauve and astrakhan, flung open the wide door.  A glassed-in chauffeur, in more mauve and astrakhan, threw in his clutch.  The door slammed.  Mrs. Fischlowitz breathed deep and grasped the nickel-plated door handle.  Mrs. Meyerburg leaned out, her small plumes wagging.

“Burk, since Miss Becky ain’t along to-day, I don’t want in front no second man.”

“Yes, madam.”

“I want instead you should take the roadster and call after Mrs. Weinstein.  You know, down by Twenty-third Street, the fourth floor back.”

“Yes, madam.”

“I want you should say, Burk, that Mrs. Meyerburg says her and her daughter should take off from their work an hour for a drive wherever they say you should take them.  And tell her, Burk, she should make for me five dozens more them paper carnations.  Right away I want you should go.”

“Yes, madam.”

They nosed slowly into the stream of the Avenue.

“Always Becky likes there should be two men stuck up in front there.  I always say to look only at the backs of my servants I don’t go out riding for.”

Erect and as if to the fantastic requirements of the situation sat Mrs. Fischlowitz, her face of a thousand lines screwed to maintain the transiency of a great moment.

“That I should live, Mrs. Meyerburg, to see such a sight like this!  In the thirty years I been in this country not but once have I walked up Fifth Avenue—­that time when my Tillie paraded in the shirtwaist strike.  I—­I can tell you I’m proud to live to see it this way from automobile.”

“Lean back, Mrs. Fischlowitz, so you be more comfortable.  That’s all right; you can’t hurt them bottles.  My Becky likes to have fancy touches all over everything.  Gold-tops bottles she has to have yet by her.  I can tell you, though, Mrs. Fischlowitz, if I do say it myself, when that girl sits up in here like a picture she looks.  How they stare you should see.”