Mr. Ginsburg turned on the couch so that his face was close to the wall, and his voice half lost in the curve of his arm.
"Well, once in a while you come across a girl that ain't—ain't like the rest of 'em. Well, there ought to be girls that ain't like the rest of 'em, oughtn't there?"
Mrs. Ginsburg's rocking and fanning slowed down a bit; a curious moment fell over the little room; a nerve-tingling quiescence that in its pregnant moment can race the mind back over an eternity—a silence that is cold with sweat, like the second when a doctor removes his stethoscope from over a patient's left breast and looks at him with a film of pity glazing his eyes.
"What you mean, Abie? Tell mamma what you mean. I ain't the one to stand in your light." Mrs. Ginsburg's speech clogged in her throat.
"You know you always got a home with me, mamma. You know, no matter what comes, I always got to tuck you in bed at night and fix the windows for you. You know you always got with me the best kind of a home I got to give you. Ain't it?"
His hand crept out and rested lightly—ever so lightly—on his mother's knee.
"Abie, you never talked like this before—I won't stand in your way, Abie. If you can make up your mind, Beulah Washeim or Hannah Rosenblatt, either would be—"
"Aw, mamma, it ain't them."
Mrs. Ginsburg's hand closed tightly over her son's; a train swooped past and created a flurry of warm breeze in the room.
"Who—is—it, Abie? Don't be afraid to tell mamma."