“I—­I worry so!”

“Sara, I ask you, wouldn’t I worry, too, if there was a reason?  God forbid if his nonsense should lead to really something serious, then it’s time to worry.”

Sara Turkletaub dried her eyes, but it was as if the shadow of crucifixion had moved forward in them.

“If just once, Mosher, Nicky would make it easy for me, like Leo did for Gussie.  When Leo’s time comes he marries a fine girl like Irma Berkowitz from a fine family, and has fine children, without Gussie has to cry her eyes out first maybe he’s in company that—­that—­”

“I don’t say, Sara, we didn’t have our hard times with your boy.  But we got results enough that we shouldn’t complain.  Maybe you’re right.  With a boy like Leo, a regular good business head who comes into the firm with us, it ain’t been such a strain for Gussie and Aaron as for us with a genius.  But neither have they got the smart son, the lawyer of the family, for theirs. We got a temperament in ours, Sara.  Ain’t that something to be proud of?”

She laid her cheek to his lapel, the freshet of her tears past staying.

“I—­I know it, Mosher.  It ain’t—­often I give way like this.”

“We got such results as we can be proud of, Sara.  A genius of a lawyer son on his way to the bench.  Mark my word if I ain’t right, on his way to the bench!”

“Yes, yes, Mosher.”

“Well then, Sara, I ask you, is it nice to—­”

“I know it, Papa.  I ought to be ashamed.  Instead of me fighting you to go easy with the boy, this time it’s you fighting me.  If only he—­he was the kind of boy I could talk this out with, it wouldn’t worry me so.  When it comes to—­to a girl—­it’s so different.  It’s just that I’m tired, Mosher.  If anything was to go wrong after all these years of struggling for him—­alone—­”

“Alone!  Alone!  Why, Sara!  Shame!  Time after time for punishing him I was a sick man!”

“That’s it!  That’s why so much of it was alone.  I don’t know why I should say it all to-night after—­after so many years of holding in.”

“Say what?”

“You meant well, God knows a father never meant better, but it wasn’t the way to handle our boy’s nature with punishments, and a quick temper like yours.  Your way was wrong, Mosher, and I knew it.  That’s why so much of it was—­alone—­so much that I had to contend with I was afraid to tell you, for fear—­for fear—­”

“Now, now, Mamma, is that the way to cry your eyes out about nothing?  I don’t say I’m not sometimes hasty—­”

“Time and time again—­keeping it in from you—­after the Chinese laundry that night after you—­you whipped him so—­you never knew the months of nights with him afterward—­when I found out he liked that—­stuff!  Me alone with him—­”

“Sara, is now time to rake up such ten-year-old nonsense!”

“It’s all coming out in me now, Mosher.  The strain.  You never knew.  That time you had to send me to the Catskills for the baths.  You thought it was rheumatism.  I knew what was the matter with me.  Worry.  The nights—­Mosher.  He liked it.  I found it hid away in the toes of his gymnasium shoes and in the mouth to his bugle.  He—­liked that stuff, Mosher.  You didn’t know that, did you?”