He reached across to pat the vein-corduroyed back of her hand. "My little sweetheart mamma," he said. She, in turn, put out her hand over his, her old sagging throat visibly constricting in a gulp, and her eyes as if they could never be finished with yearning over him. "You're a good boy, Sammy." "Sure!" "I always say no matter what it is bad my life has had for me with my twenty-five years a widow, my only daughter to marry out six hundred miles away from me, my business troubles when I had to lose the little store what your papa left me, nothing ain't nothing, Sammy, when a mother can raise for herself a boy like mine." "You mean when a fellow can pick out for himself a little sweetheart mamma like mine." "Sammy, stop it with your pinching-me nonsense like I was your best girl!" "Well, ain't you?" She paused, her cup of coffee half-way to her lips, the lines of her face seeming to want to lift into what would be a smile. "No, Sammy; your mother knows she ain't, and if she was anything but a selfish old woman, she would be glad that she ain't." "'Sh! 'Sh!" said Mr. Lipkind, reaching this time half across the table for a still steaming muffin and opening it so that its hot fragrance came out. '"Sh! No April showers! Uh! Uh! Don't you dare!" "I ain't," said Mrs. Lipkind, smiling through her tear and dashing at it with the back of her hand. "For why should I when I got only everything to be thankful for?" "Now you're shouting!" "How you think, Sammy, Clara likes a cheese pie for supper to-night? Last week I could see she didn't care much for the noodle pudding I baked her." Mr. Lipkind, who was ever so slightly and prematurely bald and still more slightly and prematurely rotund, suffered a rush of color then, his ears suddenly and redly conspicuous. "That's--that's what I started to tell you last night, ma. Clara telephoned over to the store in the afternoon she--she thought she wouldn't come to supper this Wednesday night, ma." "Sammy--you--you and Clara 'ain't got nothing wrong together, the way you don't see each other so much these two months?" "Of course not, ma; it's just happened a few times that way. The trade's in town; that's all." "How is it all of a sudden a girl in the wholesale ribbon business should have the trade to entertain like she was in the cloak-and-suit chorus?" "It's not that Clara's busy to-night, ma. She--she only thought she--for a change--there's a little side table for two--for three--where she boards--she thought maybe if--if you didn't mind, I'd go over to her place for Wednesday-night supper for a change. You know how a girl like Clara gets to feeling obligated." "Obligated from eating once a week supper in her own future house!" "She asked I should bring you, too, ma, but I know how bashful you are to go in places like that." "In such a place where it's all style and no food--yes."