Adolph Katzenstein placed his figurative ear to the ground, heard the stealthy whisper of soft messalines and clinging charmeuse, and sold out the Empire Shirt-waist Company for twenty-five hundred dollars at a slight loss. Five years later the Katzenstein Neat-Fit Petticoat was flaunted in the red and white electric lights in the lightest part of Broadway, and the figure of an ecstatic girl in an elastic-top, charmeuse-ruffled petticoat had become as much of an epic in street-car advertising as the flakiest breakfast food or the safest safety razor. Then the Katzensteins moved from a simplex to a complex apartment, furnished the dining-room in Flemish oak and the bedroom in white mahogany; Mrs. Katzenstein telephoned to her fancy grocer's for artichokes instead of buying cabbages from the street-vender, and Mr. Katzenstein walked with the four fingers of each hand thrust into the distended front pockets of his trousers. On the first Tuesday of each month Mrs. Katzenstein entertained at whist--an antediluvian survival of a bridgeless era. At eight o'clock in the morning of one of these first Tuesdays she entered her daughter's white-mahogany bedroom, raised the shades with a clatter, and drew back the curtains. "Birdie, get up! It's late, and we got house-cleaning this morning. Papa's been gone already an hour." The pink-and-white flowered comforter on the bed stirred, and two plump arms, with frills of lace falling backward, raised up like sturdy monoliths in the stretch that accompanies a yawn. "Aw--yaw--yaw--mamma! Can't you let a girl sleep after she's been up late? Tell Tillie she should begin her sweeping in the hall." "I should know what time you got home last night. You sneak in like you was afraid it would give me some pleasure to wake up and hear about it! Who was there? What did Marcus have to say?" "Aw, mamma, let me sleep--can't you? I'll get up in a minute." "So close-mouthed she is--goes to the party with a grand boy like Marcus and comes home like she was muzzled! Nothing to say! If I was out with a young man so often I could talk." "Please, mamma, pull down the shade." "'Please, mamma, pull down the shade!'" mimicked Mrs. Katzenstein, in a high falsetto. "After I rush round all day yesterday for the pink wreath for her hair, that's what I hear the next morning--that's the thanks I get!" Birdie pulled the comforter up closer about her ears, and the head on the rumpled pillow burrowed deeper. "And such laziness! I been up two hours with my _Kuechen_ and cheese-pie fixed already for this afternoon, and my daughter sleeps like a lady! The man that gets her I don't envy!" The pink-and-white mound on the bed heaved like a ship at sea. "In a minute, mamma!" Mrs. Katzenstein jerked up a filmy gown from across the back of a chair and held it from her at arm's-length.