"Now, now, baby, is it wrong a mother should talk to her own baby about what is closest in both their hearts?"
"I—I—mama, I—I don't know!"
"How he's here in this room every night lately, Ruby, since you—you're a young lady. How right away he follows us up-stairs. How lately he invited you every month down at Atlantic City. Baby, you ain't blind, are you?"
"Why, mama—why, mama, what is Meyer Vetsburg to—to me? Why, he—he's got gray hair, ma; he—he's getting bald. Why, he—he don't know I'm on earth. He—he's—"
"You mean, baby, he don't know anybody else is on earth. What's, nowadays, baby, a man forty? Why—why, ain't mama forty-one, baby, and didn't you just say yourself for sisters they take us?"
"I know, ma, but he—he—. Why, he's got an accent, ma, just like old man
Katz and—and all of 'em. He says 'too-sand' for thousand. He—"
"Baby, ain't you ashamed like it makes any difference how a good man talks?" She reached out, drawing her daughter by the wrists down into her lap. "You're a bad little flirt, baby, what pretends she don't know what a blind man can see."
Miss Kaufman's eyes widened, darkened, and she tugged for the freedom of her wrists. "Ma, quit scaring me!"
"Scaring you! That such a rising man like Vetsburg, with a business he worked himself into president from clerk, looks every day more like he's falling in love with you, should scare you!"
"Ma, not—not him!"