"I've built up a good business here, Miss Ruby. The trouble with poor papa was he was afraid to spend, and he was afraid of novelties. I couldn't learn him that a windowful of satin pumps helps swell the storm-rubber sale. Those little dollar-ninety-eights look swell on your feet, Miss Ruby; you're a good advertisement for the stock--not?" "Funny what a hit them pumps make! Mr. Leavitt was crazy about them, too; but, say, what your mother thinks of these satin slippers I'd hate to tell you. When she was down the day before I left she looked at 'em till I got so nervous I tripped over the cracks between the boards. Say, but wasn't she sore about the new glass fixtures! I kinda felt like it was my fault, too; but I was strong for 'em because--" "Mamma's the old-fashioned kind, Miss Ruby--her and poor papa like the old way of doing things. She's getting old, Miss Ruby, but she means well. She's a good mother--a good mother." "She's sure a grand woman--carrying soup across to old Levinsky every day, and all." "She's more'n you know she is, too, Miss Ruby--little things that woman does I could tell you about--when she didn't have it so good as now neither." Miss Ruby dropped her lids until her eyes were as soft as plush behind the portieres of her lashes; her voice dropped into a throat that might have been lined with that same soft plush. "I had a mother for two days--like I said to Mr. Leavitt the other day up in the country--we was talking about different things. I says to him, I says, she quit when she looked at me--just laid down and died when I was two days old. I must have been enough to scare the daylights out of any one. Next to a pink worm on a fish-hook gimme a red-headed baby for the horrors! Say, you ought to seen Mr. Leavitt fish! Six bass he caught in one day--I sat next him and watched; we had 'em fried for supper. He's some little--" "What a pleasure you'd 'a' been to your mother, Miss Ruby! Such a girl like you I could wish my own mother." "That's just what Mr. Leavitt used to tell me; but, gee! he was a kidder! I--I oughtta had a mother! Sometimes I--sometimes in the night when I can't sleep--daytimes you don't care so much--but sometimes at night I--I just don't care about nothing. With a girl like me, that ain't even known a mother or father, it ain't always so easy to keep her head above water." "Poor little girl!" "Since the day I left the Institootion I been dodging the city and jumping its mud-holes like a lady trying to cross Sixth Avenue when it's torn up. I--oh, ain't I the silly one?--treating you to my troubles! Say, I got a swell riddle! I can't give it like Leavitt--like Simon did; but--" "Always Mr. Leavitt, and now it's Simon yet--such a hit as that man made with you--not?" "Hit! Can't a girl have a gentleman friend? Can't you have a lady friend--a friend like Miss Washeim, who comes in for shoes three times--" "Ruby, can I help it when she comes in here?"