On the pistol shot of that, Sara’s body jumped out of its rigidity, all her faculties coiled to spring.

“He isn’t!  You know he isn’t!  ‘Loafer’!  Shame on you!  Whatever else he is, he’s not a loafer.  Boys will be boys—­you say so yourself.  ‘Loafer’!  You should know once what some parents go through with real loafers for sons—­”

“No child what brings you such worry is anything else than a loafer!”

“And I say ‘no’!  The minute I so much as give you a finger in finding fault with that boy, right away you take a hand!”

“I’ll break his—­”

“You don’t know yet a joke when you hear one.  I wanted to get you mad!  I get a little tired and I try to make myself funny.”

“There wasn’t no funniness in the way your eyes looked when you—­”

“I tell you I didn’t mean one word.  No matter what uneasiness that child has brought me, always he has given me more in happiness.  Twice more.  That’s what he’s been.  Twice of everything to make up for—­for only being half of my twins.”

“Then what the devil is—­”

“I don’t envy Gussie her Leo and his steady ways.  Didn’t you say yourself for a boy like ours you got to pay with a little uneasiness?”

“Not when that little uneasiness is enough to make his mother sick.”

“Sick!  If I felt any better I’d be ashamed of having so much health!  If you get mad with him and try to ask him where he stays every night is all that can cause me worry.  It’s natural a handsome boy like ours should sow what they call his wild oat.  With such a matzos face like poor Leo, from where he broke his nose, I guess it ain’t so easy for him to have his wild oat.  Promise me, Mosher, you won’t ask one question or get mad at him.  His mother knows how to handle her boy so he don’t even know he’s handled.”

“I’ll handle him—­”

“See now, just look at yourself once in the glass with your eyes full of red.  That’s why I can’t tell you nothing.  Right away you fly to pieces.  I say again, you don’t know how to handle your son.  Promise me you won’t say nothing to him or let on, Mosher.  Promise me.”

“That’s the way with you women.  You get a man crazy and then—­”

“I tell you it’s just my nonsense.”

“If I get mad you’re mad, and if I don’t get mad you’re mad!  Go do me something to help me solve such a riddle like you.”

“It’s because me and his aunt Gussie are a pair of matchmaking old women.  That the two cousins should marry the two sisters, Irma and Ada, we got it fixed between us!  Just as if because we want it that way it’s got to happen that way!”

“A pair of geeses, the two of you!”

“I wouldn’t let on to Gussie, but Ada, the single one, has got Leo’s Irma beat for looks.  Such a complexion!  And the way she comes over to sew with me afternoons!  A young girl like that!  An old woman like me!  You see, Mosher?  See?”