“It takes me back, Mrs. Fischlowitz, to old times.  Please, Mrs. Fischlowitz, to-morrow I send you two barrels.”

“Like you ain’t welcome to everything what I got in the house.  All right, noodles you should make and always I keep ’em for remembrance.  Just let me run down to cellar and bring you up flour.  No, no, you set there and let me fold down the board for you.  Rock there, Mrs. Meyerburg, till I come up with the flour.  Eggs plenty I got.”

“And a little butter, Mrs. Fischlowitz, the size of an egg, and always a pinch of salt.”

“The neighbors should see this!  Mrs. Simon Meyerburg making for me noodles in my kitchen!” She was off and down a small rear stairway, a ribbon of ejaculations trailing back over one shoulder.

In her chair beside the warm range Mrs. Meyerburg sat quiescent, her head back against the rest, eyes half closed, and slanting toward the kitchen door.  Against the creaking floor her chair swayed rhythmically.  Tears ran down to meet the corners of her mouth, but her lips were looped up in a smile.

The cat regarded her through green eyes slit down their middle.  Toward the rear of the stove the pan of water seethed.

Suddenly Mrs. Meyerburg leaned forward with a great flash across her face.  “Simon,” she cried, leaning to the door and stretching forward quavering arms.  “Simon, my darling!” She leaned further, the rims of her eyes stretched wide.  “Simon—­come, my darling.  Simon!”

Into the opposite doorway, smirched with flour and a white pail of it dangling, flashed Mrs. Fischlowitz, breathing hard from her climb.

“What, Mrs. Meyerburg, you want something?”

“Simon,” cried Mrs. Meyerburg, her voice lifted in a paean of welcome; “come, my darling, come in.  Come!” And she tried to rise, but sat back, quivering, her brow drenched in sudden sweat.

Raucous terror tore through Mrs. Fischlowitz’s voice, and she let fall her pail, a white cloud rising from off the spill.  “Mrs. Meyerburg, there ain’t nobody there.  Mrs. Meyerburg, he ain’t there.  Mrs. Meyerburg!”

“Simon!”

“Mrs. Meyerburg, he ain’t there.  Nobody’s there! 
Ach—­help—­doctor—­Tillie!”

Back against Mrs. Fischlowitz’s frenzied arms lay Mrs. Meyerburg, very gray, her hand against her left breast and down toward the ribs.

“Gott!  Gott!  Please, Mrs. Meyerburg—­Mrs. Meyerburg!” dragging back one of the weary eyelids and crying out at what she saw there.  “Help doctor—­Tillie—­quick—­quick—­”

She could not see, poor dear, that into those locked features was crystallized the great ecstasy of reunion.

THE NTH COMMANDMENT

The Christmas ballad of the stoker, even though writ from the fiery bowels of amidships and with a pen reeking with his own sweat, could find no holiday sale; nor the story of the waiter who serves the wine he dares only smell, and weary stands attendant into the joyous dawn.  Such social sores—­the drayman, back bent to the Christmas box whose mysteries he must never know; the salesgirl standing on her swollen feet on into the midnight hour—­such sores may run and fester, but not to sicken public eyes.