When he sang “The Dying Cowboy’s Lament” and came to the passage, “Oh, take me to the churchyard and lay the sod o-o-over me,” Mrs. Brewster used to say:  “Gussie, Mr. Brewster’ll be down in ten minutes.  You can start the eggs.”

* * * * *

In the months of their gay life in Sixty-Seventh Street Hosey Brewster never once sang “The Dying Cowboy’s Lament,” nor whistled “In the Sweet By-and-By.”  No; he whistled not at all, or when he did, gay bits of jazz heard at the theatre or in a restaurant the night before.  He deceived no one, least of all himself.  Sometimes his voice would trail off into nothingness, but he would catch the tune and toss it up again, heavily, as though it were a physical weight.

Theatres!  Music!  Restaurants!  Teas!  Shopping!  The gay life!

“Enjoying yourself, Milly?” he would say.

“Time of my life, father.”

She had her hair dressed in those geometrical undulations without which no New York audience feels itself clothed.  They saw Pinky less frequently as time went on and her feeling of responsibility lessened.  Besides, the magazine covers took most of her day.  She gave a tea for her father and mother at her own studio, and Mrs. Brewster’s hat, slippers, gown, and manner equalled in line, style, cut, and texture those of any other woman present, which rather surprised her until she had talked to five or six of them.

She and Hosey drifted together and compared notes.  “Say, Milly,” he confided, “they’re all from Wisconsin—­or approximately; Michigan, and Minnesota, and Iowa, and around.  Far’s I can make out there’s only one New Yorker, really, in the whole caboodle of ’em.”

“Which one?”

“That kind of plain little one over there—­sensible looking, with the blue suit.  I was talking to her.  She was born right here in New York, but she doesn’t live here—­that is, not in the city.  Lives in some place in the country, in a house.”

A sort of look came into Mrs. Brewster’s eyes.  “Is that so?  I’d like to talk to her, Hosey.  Take me over.”

She did talk to the quiet little woman in the plain blue suit.  And the quiet little woman said:  “Oh, dear, yes!” She ignored her r’s fascinatingly, as New Yorkers do.  “We live in Connecticut.  You see, you Wisconsin people have crowded us out of New York; no breathing space.  Besides, how can one live here?  I mean to say—­live.  And then the children—­it’s no place for children, grown up or otherwise.  I love it—­oh, yes, indeed.  I love it.  But it’s too difficult.”

Mrs. Brewster defended it like a true Westerner.  “But if you have just a tiny apartment, with a kitchenette—­”

The New York woman laughed.  There was nothing malicious about her.  But she laughed.  “I tried it.  There’s one corner of my soul that’s still wrinkled from the crushing.  Everything in a heap.  Not to speak of the slavery of it.  That—­that deceitful, lying kitchenette.”