"You want your own clerks to beat you to business so they can say they got a lazy boss?"
"I'm awake, ma." Reaching up to stroke her hair, thin and gray now, and drawn back into an early-morning knob.
"Don't splash in the bath-room so this morning, Sammy; it's a shame for the wall-paper."
"I won't"—drawing the cord of his robe about his waist, and as if they did not both of them know just how faithfully disregarded would be that daily admonition.
Then Mrs. Lipkind flung back the snowy sheets and bed-coverings, baring the striped ticking of the mattress.
"Hurry, Sammy! I'm up so long I'm ready for my second cup of coffee."
"Two minutes." And off across the hall, whistling, towel across arm.
It was that little early moment sublimated by nothing more than the fusty beginnings of a workaday, the mere recollecting of which was one day to bring a wash of tears behind his eyes and a twist of anguish into his heart.
Next breakfast, and to dine within reach of the coal-range which brews it is so homely a fashion that even Mr. Lipkind, upon whom such matters of bad form lay as a matter of course, was wont to remonstrate.
"What's the matter with the dining-room, ma? Since when have dining-rooms gone out of style?"