"They eat me, ma. Feel--I'm like ice! I didn't mean it; you know I didn't mean it!" "My baby," she said, "my wonderful boy, it's like I can never get used to the wonder of having you. The greatest one of them all should be mine--a plain woman's like mine!" He teased her, eager to conciliate and to ride down his own state of quivering. "Now, ma--now--now--don't forget Rimsky!" "Rimsky! A man three times your age who was playing concerts before you was born! Is that a comparison? From your clippings-books I can show Rimsky who the world considers the greatest violinist. Rimsky he rubs into me!" "All right, then, the press-clippings, but did Elsass, the greatest manager of them all, bring me a contract for thirty concerts at two thousand a concert? Now I've got you! Now!" She would not meet his laughter. "Elsass! Believe me, he'll come to you yet! My boy should worry if he makes fifty thousand a year more or less. Rimsky should have that honor--for so long as he can hold it. But he won't hold it long. Believe me, I don't rest easy in my bed till Elsass comes after you. Not for so big a contract like Rimsky's, but bigger--not for thirty concerts, but for fifty!" "_Brava! Brava!_ There's a woman for you. More money than she knows what to do with, and then not satisfied!" She was still too tremulous for banter. "'Not satisfied'? Why, Leon, I never stop praying my thanks for you!" "All right, then," he cried, laying his icy fingers on her cheek; "to-morrow we'll call a _mignon_--a regular old-fashioned Allen Street prayer-party." "Leon, you mustn't make fun." "Make fun of the sweetest girl in this room!" "'Girl'! Ah, if I could only hold you by me this way, Leon. Always a boy--with me--your poor old mother--your only girl. That's a fear I suffer with, Leon--to lose you to a--girl. That's how selfish the mother of such a wonder-child like mine can get to be." "All right! Trying to get me married off again. Nice! Fine!" "Is it any wonder I suffer, son? Twenty-one years to have kept you by me a child. A boy that never in his life was out after midnight except to catch trains. A boy that never has so much as looked at a girl and could have looked at princesses. To have kept you all these years--mine--is it any wonder, son, I never stop praying my thanks for you? You don't believe Hancock, son, the way he keeps always teasing you that you should have a--what he calls--affair--a love-affair? Such talk is not nice, Leon--an affair!" "Love-affair poppycock!" said Leon Kantor, lifting his mother's face and kissing her on eyes about ready to tear. "Why, I've got something, ma, right here in my heart for you that--" "Leon, be careful your shirt-front!" "That's so--so what you call 'tender,' for my best sweetheart that I--Oh, love-affair--poppycock!" She would not let her tears come. "My boy--my wonder-boy!" "There goes the overture, ma." "Here, darlink--your glass of water." "I can't stand it in here; I'm suffocating!"