"What, mamma?"
"If I could—if I had the right—" Both were silent.
"What, mamma?"
"If I could believe in spite of—"
The gilded and artistic clock ticked among the pinks and lilies: tick-tack, tick-tack.
"What is it, mamma?"
"A cake, Ira!"
As Irene took a cake from the silver basket with her trembling hand, she cried, with glad laughter:
"At last you will eat even a cake! You have changed immensely, mamma. I cannot call you now as I once did, a little glutton, since for some time past you eat so little that it is nearly nothing."
Malvina smiled fondly at the name which on a time her daughter had given her jestingly, and Irene continued in the same tone: