"It ain't like you to come up early, heat or no heat. _Ach!_ I should have known when he comes up-stairs early it means something. What hurts you, Abie? That's what I need yet, a sickness! What hurts you, Abie?" "Mamma, the way you go on it's enough to make me sick if I ain't. Can't a boy come up-stairs just because--" "I know you like a book; when you close the store and lay down before supper there's something wrong. Tell me, Abie--" "All right, then! You know it so well I can't tell you nothing--all I got is a little tiredness from the heat." "Go in and lay down. Can't you tell mamma what hurts you, Abie? Are you afraid it would give me a little pleasure if you tell me? No consideration that boy has got for his mother!" "Honest, mamma, ain't I told you three times I ain't nothing but tired?" "He snaps me up yet like he was a turtle and me his worst enemy! For what should I worry myself? For my part, I don't care. I only say, Abie, if there's anything hurts you--you know how poor papa started to complain just one night like this how he fussed at me when I wanted the doctor. If there's anything hurts you--" "There ain't, mamma." "Come in and let me fix the sofa for you. I only say when you close the store early there's something wrong. That Miss Ruby should go off yet--vacation she has to have--a girl like that, with her satin shoes and all--comes into the store at nine o'clock 'cause she runs to the picture shows all night! Yetta Washeim seen her. Vacation yet she has to have! Twenty years I spent with poor papa in the store, and no vacation did I have. Lay down, Abie." "All right, then," said Mr. Ginsburg, as if duty were a geological eon, and throwing himself across the flowered velvet lounge in the parlor. "I'll lay down if it suits you better." Mr. Ginsburg was of a cut that never appears on a classy clothes advertisement or in the silver frame on the bird's-eye maple dressing-table of sweet sixteen or more; he belonged to the less ornamented but not unimportant stratum that manufactures the classy clothes by the hundred thousand, and eventually develops into husbands and sponsors for full-length double-breasted sealskin coats for the sweet sixteens and more. He was as tall as Napoleon, with a round, un-Napoleonic head, close-shaved so that his short-nap hair grew tight like moss on a rock, and a beard that defied every hirsute precaution by pricking darkly through the lower half of his face as phenomenally as the first grass-blades of spring push out in an hour. "Let me fix you a little something, Abie. I got grand broth in the ice-box--all I need to do is to heat it." "Ain't I told you I ain't hungry, mamma?" "When that boy don't eat he's sick. I should worry yet! Poor papa! If he'd listened to me he'd be living to-day. I'm your worst enemy--I am! I work against my own child--that's the thanks what I get."