"Till three o'clock in the afternoon she told me herself how her and them girls used to sleep, two and three in a boarding-house room, and such a mess!" "Ma, if you and Sadie don't cut out this rowing I'll put on my hat and go back down-town where I came from. What is this, anyway, a barroom or a home out on Washington Boulevard? You want grandma to hear you? Ma! Sadie!" "My poor boy! My poor boy!" "I didn't start it, Herm. I was sitting up here quiet. All I ask, Herm, is for you to take me back to New York to-morrow night on your trip. Let me go, Herm, for--for an indefinite stay. It ain't this house, Herm, and it ain't your mother or your sister and---and it ain't you--it ain't any one. It's all of you put together! I can't stand the speed out here! There ain't none!" "I guess she wants, Hermie, for her bad-girl notions you should give up the best retail business in St. Louis and take her to live in New York, where she can always be in with that nix-nux theatri--" "No, no, he knows I don't want that!" "If she did, ma, we'd go!" "Herm knows it was all a mistake with me. I didn't know my own mind. I wanna go back along where I came from and where I belong! It ain't like I was the kind of a girl with another man in the case--" "We should thank her, Hermie, that there ain't more scandal mixed up in it yet!" "Ma!" "My poor boy, what could have had his pick from the first girls in St.--" "Ma!" There was an edge to Mr. Loeb's voice that had the bite of steel. He tossed his greatcoat to the snowy bed, walking between the bed-end and the mantel, round to the crouched figure of his wife. "There, there, Sadie!" he said in his throat, and, stooping over her: "I give in! I give in!" Her head flew up. "Herm!" "My son!" "No, no, ma, it's no use trying to put anything but a jingle-bell harness on poor little Jingle Bells. She don't understand us any more than we--we can understand her!" "That's it, Herm; that's why I say if you'll only let me go!" "Oh, my God! A separation in the Loeb family? My poor dead husband! My daughter Etta, president of the Ladies' Auxiliary! Grandma--" "'Sh-h-h, ma! You want grandma to hear?" "My son, the cleanest, finest--" "Ma!" There were lines in his face as if a knot at his heart were tightening them. "You mustn't blame her, ma; and, Sadie, you mustn't feel this way toward my mother. Nobody's to blame. I've been thinking this thing over more than you think, Sadie, and I--I give in. She's a poor little thing, ma, that's been trapped into something she can't fit into." "Yes, Herm, that's it." "It's natural. My fault, too. I carried her off like a partridge. Don't cry, little Jingle Bells! To-morrow night we leave for New York, and when I come back you're going to stay on with--" "Sylvette says--" "With friends, indefinitely. Don't cry, little Jingle Bells, don't! 'Sh-h-h, ma! There, didn't I tell you you'd rouse grandma!"