"Sylvette says—"
"With friends, indefinitely. Don't cry, little Jingle Bells, don't!
'Sh-h-h, ma! There, didn't I tell you you'd rouse grandma!"
With her hands stuffed against rising sobs, his mother ceased rocking herself to and fro in her straight chair, her eyes straining through the open door. A thin voice came through, querulous, and then the tap-tap of a cane.
Mr. Herman Loeb answered the voice, standing quiet at the bed-end.
"Nothing is the matter, grandma."
"Come and get me, Herman."
"Yes, grandma."
He hastened out and re-entered almost immediately, leading Mrs. Simon Schulien, her little figure so fragile that the hand directing the cane quavered of palsy, and the sightless face, so full of years and even some of their sweetness, fallen in slightly, in presage of dust to dust.
"Bertha?"
"Yes, mamma."