"Mother," he said, "did you pack my throat atomizer?"
She licked up at the taste of her tears.
"It's wrapped in between your socks. You're standing in a draught, Albert; close that window. You heard that man in the train about the epidemic of colds that is starting all over the country. O my God! I'm just so upset. And now that it has happened everything is so different. I could tear out my tongue for what I want to say and I can't say anything—not so much your father and I—at least we had Albert to help make it up to us. We know what a son he has been, don't we, Ben, but to think of him, the upstandingest boy that ever wore shoe leather—him having to suffer for it—"
"Carrie, Carrie, it's time to go over all that later. Let's get our bearings. Lilly, you've not changed except for the bones kind of setting and—"
"I don't like you in those shirt waists. Too mannish. The lace I used to dress that child in! The way I used to love to poke in the bins—sacrificed for her. These years—years. Lilly—tell me you've been a good girl—that your sinning has only been against us—child that I raised—Lilly—"
They were locked in embrace again, Mrs. Becker blown hot and cold by the ever-shifting clouds of her emotions, the two men standing by in a state of helplessness that was always in inverse proportion to the lavalike eruptions from the crater of her nerves.
"Mother, father and I will leave you alone for a while and you have your talk together first—"
"No! She's your wife. You have yours first! It's about time you were coming into some of your rights!"
Such a fiery redness was out in Albert's ears that against the lights they were of the translucency of red-hot iron, and even through her pity for his malaise, her old poignant distaste of him would not be laid. She wanted him to lunge somehow with that bull-like head of his with the bashedin squareness to its top, but since nothing like that happened, she sprang up instead, grasping her mother's hand.
"Not now," she cried. "I want to tell you all something first, and then
I want to take you—to my place—to see where—the way I live—"