“Oh,” said Ada, blushing softly, “Mr. Turkletaub isn’t interested in that.”

“Yes, I am,” said Nicholas, politely, eating one of the meats.

“You mean the Tudor dining room—­”

No, no!  You know, the blue-and-white one you said you liked best of all.”

“It was a nursery,” began Ada, softly.  “Just one of those blue-and-white darlingnesses for somebody’s little darling.”

“For somebody’s little darling,” repeated Mrs. Turkletaub, silently.  She had the habit, when moved, of mouthing people’s words after them.

“My idea was—­Oh, it’s so silly to be telling it again, Mrs. Turkletaub!”

“Silly!  I think it’s grand that a girl brought up to the best should want to make something of herself.  Don’t you, Nick?”

“H-m-m!”

“Well, my little idea was white walls with little Delft-blue borders of waddling duckies; white dotted Swiss curtains in the brace of sunny southern-exposure windows, with little Delft-blue borders of more waddling duckies; and dear little nursery rhymes painted in blue on the headboard to keep baby’s dreams sweet.”

“—­baby’s dreams sweet!  I ask you, is that cute, Nick?  Baby’s dreams she even interior decorates.”

“My—­instructor liked that idea, too.  He gave me ‘A’ on the drawing.”

“He should have given you the whole alphabet.  And tell him about the chairs, Ada.  Such originality.”

“Oh, Mrs. Turkletaub, that was just a—­a little—­idea—­”

“The modesty of her!  Believe me, if it was mine, I’d call it a big one.  Tell him.”

“Mummie and daddie chairs I call them.”

Sara (mouthing):  “Mummie and daddie—­”

“Two white-enamel chairs to stand on either side of the crib so when mummie and daddie run up in their evening clothes to kiss baby good night—­Oh, I just mean two pretty white chairs, one for mummie and one for daddie.”  Little crash.

“I ask you, Nicky, is that poetical?  ’So when mummie and daddie run up to kiss baby good night.’  I remember once in Russia, Nicky, all the evening clothes we had was our nightgowns, but when you and your little twin brother were two and a half years old, one night I—­”

“Mrs. Turkletaub, did you have twins?”

“Did I have twins, Nicky, she asks me.  She didn’t know you were twins.  A red one I had, as red as my black one is black.  You see my Nicky how black and mad-looking he is even when he’s glad; well, just so—­”

“Now, mother!”

“Just so beautiful and fierce and red was my other beautiful baby.  You didn’t know, Ada, that a piece of my heart, the red of my blood, I left lying out there.  Nicky—­she didn’t know—­”

She could be so blanched and so stricken when the saga of her motherhood came out in her eyes, the pallor of her face jutting out her features like lonely landmarks on waste land, that her husband and her son had learned how to dread for her and spare her.