A long cooking fork in her hand, and a puff of steam hissing out after her, Mrs. Schum peered into the hallway. She was strangely smaller, Lilly thought, as if the flesh were beginning to wither off the rack of her bones.
"Mrs. Schum! Dear Mrs. Schum!"
"Who's that?"
"Come out, gramaw. It's no one to be afraid of."
"Harry!" Her voice came cracking out like a shot. "Harry, are you in trouble?"
"No—no—"
"Who is hounding you? If you are here about my grandson, madam, they are all the time trying to get the best of my boy. He hasn't broken parole since old Judge Delahanty down in the Twenty-third Street Court—"
"Mrs. Schum! Dear Mrs. Schum! Don't you know me? Please! Think, dearie, the little girl out in St. Louis who used to plague you for bread and butter—"
The old face loosened, the eyes peering through spectacles held across the nose with a bit of twine.
"It isn't—Lilly—Becker?"