"My daughter falls in love with a fine, upright young man like Leo Markovitch, and I ain't satisfied yet! Suppose maybe for two or three years you ain't so much on your feet. Suppose even his uncle Meyer don't take him in. Don't any young man got to get his start slow?"
"Mommy!"
"Because I got for her my own ideas, my daughter shouldn't have in life the man she wants!"
"But, mommy, if—"
"You think for one minute, Ruby, after all these years without this house on my hands and my boarders and their kicks, a woman like me would be satisfied? Why, the more, baby, I think of such a thing, the more I see it for myself! What you think, Ruby, I do all day without steps to run, and my gedinks with housekeeping and marketing after eighteen years of it? At first, Ruby, ain't it natural it should come like a shock that you and that rascal Leo got all of a sudden so—so thick? I—It ain't no more, baby. I—I feel fine about it."
"Oh, mommy, if—if I thought you did!"
"I do. Why not? A fine young man what my girl is in love with. Every mother should have it so."
"Mommy, you mean it?"
"I tell you I feel fine. You don't need to feel bad or cry another minute. I can tell you I feel happy. To-morrow at Atlantic City if such a rascal don't tell me for himself, I—I ask him right out!"
"Ma!"