"He--I just can't begin to tell you, ma, the kind of a fellow Leo is till you know him better, mommy dear." "Always Vetsburg says he's a wide-awake one!" "That's just what he is, ma. He's just a prince if--if there ever was one. One little prince of a fellow." She fell to crying softly, easy tears that flowed freely. "I--I can tell you, baby, I'm happy as you." "Mommy dear, kiss me." They talked, huddled arm in arm, until dawn flowed in at the window and dirty roofs began to show against a clean sky. Footsteps began to clatter through the asphalt court and there came the rattle of milk-cans. "I wonder if Annie left out the note for Mrs. Suss's extra milk!" "Don't get up, dearie; it's only five--" "Right away, baby, with extra towels I must run up to Miss Flora's room. That six o'clock-train for Trenton she gets." "Ma dear, let me go." "Lay right where you are! I guess you want you should look all worn out when a certain young man what I know walks down to meet our train at Atlantic City this afternoon, eh?" "Oh, mommy, mommy!" And Ruby lay back against the luxury of pillows. At eleven the morning rose to its climax--the butcher, the baker, and every sort of maker hustling in and out the basementway; the sweeping of upstairs halls; windows flung open and lace curtains looped high; the smell of spring pouring in even from asphalt; sounds of scrubbing from various stoops; shouts of drivers from a narrow street wedged with its Saturday-morning blockade of delivery wagons, and a crosstown line of motor-cars, tops back and nosing for the speedway of upper Broadway. A homely bouquet of odors rose from the basement kitchen, drifting up through the halls, the smell of mutton bubbling as it stewed. After a morning of up-stairs and down-stairs and in and out of chambers, Mrs. Kaufman, enveloped in a long-sleeved apron still angular with starch, hung up the telephone receiver in the hall just beneath the staircase and entered her bedroom, sitting down rather heavily beside the open shelf of her desk. A long envelope lay uppermost on that desk, and she took it up slowly, blinking her eyes shut and holding them squeezed tight as if she would press back a vision, even then a tear oozing through. She blinked it back, but her mouth was wry with the taste of tears. A slatternly maid poked her head in through the open door. "Mrs. Katz broke 'er mug!" "Take the one off Mr. Krakow's wash-stand and give it to her, Tillie." She was crying now frankly, and when the door swung closed, even though it swung back again on its insufficient hinge, she let her head fall forward into the pillow of her arms, the curve of her back rising and falling. But after a while the greengrocer came on his monthly mission, in his white apron and shirt-sleeves, and she compared stubs with him from a file on her desk and balanced her account with careful squinted glance and a keen eye for an overcharge on a cut of breakfast bacon.