The third year that Nicholas practiced law, junior member in the Broad Street firm of Leavitt & Dilsheimer, he took to absenting himself from dinner so frequently, that across the sturdy oak dining table, laid out in a red-and-white cloth, gold-band china not too thick of lip, and a cut-glass fern dish with cunningly contrived cotton carnations stuck in among the growing green, Sara, over rich and native foods, came more and more to regard her husband through a clutch of fear. "I tell you, Mosher, something has come over the boy. It ain't like him to miss _gefülte_-fish supper three Fridays in succession." "All right, then, because he has a few more or less _gefülte_-fish suppers in his life, let it worry you! If that ain't a woman every time." "_Gefülte_ fish! If that was my greatest worry. But it's not so easy to prepare, that you should take it so much for granted. _Gefülte_ fish, he says, just like it grew on trees and didn't mean two hours' chopping on my feet." "Now, Sara, was that anything to fly off at? Do I ever so much as eat two helpings of it in Gussie's house? That's how I like yours better!" "Gussie don't chop up her onions fine enough. A hundred times I tell her and a hundred times she does them coarse. Her own daughter-in-law, a girl that was raised in luxury, can cook better as Gussie. I tell you, Mosher, I take off my hat to those Berkowitz girls. And if you should ask me, Ada is a finer one even than Leo's Irma." The sly look of wiseacre wizened up Mosher's face. "Ada!" she says. "The way you pronounce that girl's name, Sara, it's like every tooth in your mouth was diamond filled out of Berkowitz's jewelry firm." Quite without precedent Sara's lips began to quiver at this pleasantry. "I'm worried, Mosher," she said, putting down a forkful of untasted food that had journeyed twice toward her lips. "I don't say he--Nicky--I don't say he should always stay home evenings when Ada comes over sometimes with Leo and Irma, but night after night--three times whole nights--I--Mosher, I'm afraid." In his utter well-being from her warming food, Mosher drank deeply and, if it must be admitted, swishingly, through his mustache, inhaling copiously the draughts of Sara's coffee. Do not judge from the mustache cup with the gilt "Papa" inscribed, that Sara's home did not meticulously reflect the newer McKinley period, so to speak, of the cut-glass-china closet, curio cabinet, brass bedstead, velour upholstery, and the marbelette Psyche. They had furnished newly three years before, the year the business almost doubled, Sara and Gussie simultaneously, the two of them poring with bibliophiles' fervor over Grand Rapids catalogic literature.