"Life _is_ short, Julius, and for our children we should do all what we can. We can't always be with them, Julius. We--we must do the right thing by 'em. Like you say we--we're getting old--together, Julius. We don't want nothing to reproach ourselves with." "Ya, ya, Becky." Darkness fell thickly, like blue velvet portieres swinging together, and stars sprang out in a clear sky. They rocked in silence, their heads touching. The gray cat, with eyes like opals, sprang into the hollow of Mr. Binswanger's arm. "Billy, you come to sit by mamma and me? Ni-ce Bil-ly!" "We go in now, papa; in the damp you get rheumatism." "Ya, ya, Becky--hear how he purrs, like an engine." "Come on, papa; damper every minute it gets." He rose with his rheumatic jerkiness, placed the cat gently on all fours on the floor, and closed his fingers around the curve of his wife's outstretched arm. "When--when we go--go to the city, Becky, we don't sublet Billy; we--we take him with us, not, Becky?" "Yes, papa." "Ya, ya, Becky." * * * * * The chief sponsors for the family hotel are neurasthenia and bridge whist, the inability of the homemaker and the debility of the housekeeper. Under these invasions Hestia turns out the gas-logs, pastes a To Let sign on the windows, locks the front door behind her, and gives the key to the auctioneer. The family holds out the dining-room clock and a pair of silver candlesticks that came over on the stupendously huge cargo which time and curio dealers have piled upon the good ship _Mayflower_; engages a three-room suite on the ninth floor of a European-plan hotel, and inaugurates upon the sly American paradox of housekeeping in non-housekeeping apartments. The Wellington Hotel was a rococo haven for such refugees from the modern social choler, and its doors flew open and offered them a family rate, excellent cuisine, quarantine. Excellent cuisine, however, is a clever but spiceless parody on home cookery. Mr. Binswanger read his evening menu with the furrow deepening between his eyes. "Such a soup they got! Mulla-ga-what?" "'Shh-h-h, papa; mullagatawny! Rice soup." "Mullagatawny! Fine mess!" "'Shh-h-h, Julius; don't talk so loud. Does the whole dining-room got to know you don't know nothing?" Mrs. Binswanger took nervous resume of the red-and-gold, bright-lighted dining-room. "For a plate of noodles soup, Becky, they can have all their mullagatawny! Fifteen cents for a plate of soup, Becky, and at home for that you could make a whole pot full twice so good." "'Sh-h-h-h, papa." "Don't '_sh-h-h-h-h_ me no more neither, Pearlie. Five months, from October to February, I been shooed like I was one of our roosters at home got over in Schlossman's yard. There, you read for me, Izzy; such language I don't know." Isadore took up a card and crinkled one eye in a sly wink toward his mother and sister. "_Rinderbrust und Kartoffel Salad_, pa, _mit Apful Kuechen und Kaletraufschnitt._"