"Abe!"
"There now—with two locks on the door we should worry about burglars! I'm the burglar that's stealing the ruby, ain't I?... One, two, three—up we go, to mamma and supper. Watch out for the step there! I want her to see my Ruby—finer than you can buy in the finest jewelry store!" cried Mr. Ginsburg, clinging proudly to his metaphor.
Any of three emotions were crowded into his voice—excitement, trepidation, the love that is beyond understanding—or the trilogy of them all.
"Come along, Ruby-la!"
Through the rear of the store and up a winding back stairway they marched like glorified children; and at the first landing he must pause and kiss away the words of fear and nervousness from her lips and look into her diffident eyes with the same rapture that was Jupiter's when he gazed on Antiope.
"Such a little scarey she is—like mamma was going to bite!"
At the top of the flight the door of the apartment stood open; a blob of gas lighted a yellowish way to the kitchen, and through the yellow Mrs. Ginsburg's voice drifted out to them:
"Once more I call you, Abie, and then I dish up supper and eat alone—no consideration that boy has got for his mother! He should know what it is not to have a mother who fixes him Pfannküchen in this heat! Don't complain to me if everything is not fit to eat! In the heat I stand and cook, and that boy closes so late—Abie! Once more I call you and then I dish up. Ab-ie!" Mrs. Ginsburg's voice rose to an acidulated high C.
"Mamma! Mamma, don't get so excited—it ain't late. The days get shorter, that's all. Look! I brought company for supper. We don't stand on no ceremony. Come right in the kitchen, Ruby."
Mr. Ginsburg pushed Miss Cohn into the room before him, and Mrs. Ginsburg raised her face from over the steaming stove-top—the pink of heat and exertion high in her cheek. Reflexly her hand clutched at the collar of her black wrapper, where it fell away to reveal the line where the double scallop of her chin met the high swell of her bosom.