"Not such a mother as you've been a father--me and them girls never wanted for one thing, even when you couldn't afford it as now." "Ah--ho!" sighed Mr. Katzenstein. "You're tired, papa, and it's late. Here, I'll unlace your shoes for you." "No; in a minute I go to bed--such a back-ache!" "She's got a good man; and, like you say, that's the main thing," repeated Mrs. Katzenstein, intent on self-conviction. "It ain't always the money." "_Ya, ya!_" said Mr. Katzenstein. "Look at us when we was down on Grand Street! We was happy--You remember that green-plush dress I had, papa?" "Yes, Salcha." "Don't go to sleep sitting there, papa; you'll take cold." Mr. Katzenstein's fingers, that were never straight, closed over the veined back of his wife's hand. "In a minute I go to bed." "If she had known what was coming when he asked her last night it might be different; but now it's too late, and everything is for the best." "Yes, mamma." "She's happy--and that's the main thing." "Time flies," he said, with his eyes on the flames. "Only yesterday she was a baby!" "Ain't it so, papa? We had 'em, and we suffered for 'em, and now we give 'em up; that's what it means to raise a family." "Salcha," he said, his fingers stroking hers gently, "we're getting old--ain't it, old lady?" "Yes," she said, rocking rhythmically; "twenty-eight years now! We've had good times, and we've had bad times." "Good--and--bad--times," he repeated. They watched the flames. After a while Mr. Katzenstein's head fell forward on his chest and he dozed lightly. The clock ticked somberly and with increasing loudness; twice it traveled its circle, and twice it tonged the hour. The gas-logs burned steadily and kept the shadows dancing. Off somewhere a dog bayed; a creak, which is one of the noises that belong solely to after midnight, came from the direction of one of the windows. Mr. Katzenstein woke with a start and jerked his head up. "Mamma!" he cried, dazed with sleep. "Mamma! Birdie! Mamma!" "Yes, papa," she replied, smiling at him and with her hand still beneath his; "I'm here." BREAKERS AHEAD In the ink-blue shrieking trail of the twenty-two-hour Imperial flyer, Slateville lay stark alongside the singing tracks as if hurtled there like a spark off a speed-hot emery wheel. The Imperial flyer swooped through the dun-colored village like the glance of a lovely coquette shoots through her victim's heart and leaves it bare. At eight-one the far-off Imperial voice hallooed through the darkness like a conquering hero whose vanguard is a waving sword which flashes in the sunlight before he and his steed come up out of the horizon. At eight-four a steam yodel shook the panes and lamp-chimneys of Slateville, a semaphore studded with a ruby stiffened out against the sky, and a white eye--the size of a bicycle-wheel--flashed down the tracks.