"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 b.u.t.ter--"

The old face loosened, the eyes peering through spectacles held across the nose with a bit of twine.

"It isn't--Lilly--Becker?"

"Right the first time, gramaw!"

"Bless my heart! Bless my soul! Let me sit down. I'm right weak. Little Lilly--Becker!"

They embraced there in a hallway hardly wide enough to contain them.

These two, who ordinarily might have met again, after such a span of years, in the mildest of reunions, here in each other's arms, hungrily, heartbeat to heartbeat.

"Lilly, Lilly, come in here and let me look at you. Light up the front room, Harry. Well, I declare! Let me sit down. I'm right weak-kneed.

Law! pretty is no name! Well, I declare!"

In the little front room of chromos, folding bed with desk attachment, a bisque knickknack or two, they were finally knee to knee, Lilly's hat tossed aside, her hands clasping the old veiny ones.

"Begin at the beginning, Mrs. Schum. Everything. First, tell me, dear, how long since you have heard of my folks?"

"Harry, you go out in the kitchen and keep the things warm until gramaw comes out to dish up. Set the table with a cloth on, and run over to the delicatessen for a bit of cold cuts. He's a right smart help to me, Lilly. Not like some boys, too proud to help. And now--now--let me see--why, it's two years since I met your mother downtown in St. Louis before I had any idea of coming here."

"How did she look?"

"Splendid. She was with one of her euchre friends, so I didn't have the chance for an old-time chat, but she made me promise to come and see her, and 'pon my word, just as young and pretty as you please, with a fine face veil and a purple feather boa and shopping out of the Busy Bee bins just the way she used to do."

"She looked--happy?"

"Indeed she did! Buying some menfolk stuff. Wool socks, I think she said, for your father, was it, who is subject to colds in the head--"

"No, those weren't for papa. Oh, Mrs. Schum, it's so good to hear of her first hand like this! What--what did she say about me?"

"Told me about you off here studying opera, and your husband was making his home with them. I--I took it from what she said you were none too happy with him, but I had no idea of your being here still! Aren't things well with you, Lilly? I always said you reminded me of my Annie, and she would have turned out something big if she had lived. I expect it of you, too, Lilly."

"What else?"

"She put up a bold front with me, I will say that, never letting on that there had been trouble. And then just before I left--we came away mighty unexpectedly--Katy Stutz--"

"Katy Stutz--"

"Yes, came to sew for a family I had boarding with me, and she said she heard you had left him for good and that your parents took sides with your husband and had him in their home, occupying your very room, and that your mother was as fussy over him as she ever was over you, babying him to death. Lilly, Lilly, what is wrong with you?"

"And my father, Mrs. Schum?"

"Fine. Mary says he's a bit whiter, but not a whit changed. He's done well in the rope business, hasn't he? Although I always say it was your mother's practical ways got him on his feet, and from what I understand that young man you married has given him many a lift. They've gone in business together, haven't they? They tell me, Lilly, there is not a steadier or more advancing young man than yours. Ah me, the ways of young ones are strange I guess you haven't heard about Harry, either?"

"No."

"He's a good boy, Harry is, Lilly, but I've been through trouble with him. That's the reason for our being here. You see, Lilly, him being a poor orphan all his life, they're all against him. The little fellow never had the right raising, knocking around with all those n.i.g.g.e.r servants, and me with never the time to do for him."

"Oh, Mrs. Schum, how can you! Why, there wasn't any of the youngsters in the boarding house had a sweeter influence over him than Harry."

"No, no. It was all my fault. I was too pressed trying to make ends meet. I should have given up that big house years ago for a few roomers like now. He got in bad ways, Lilly. Not noisy and with gangs like some rough boys would. But quiet--solitary-like. I never knew him to hang around with that gang of boys that used to loaf over at Pirney's drug store or anything like that, but after the Kembles and you folks left, Harry got to stealing, Lilly. Little things. The child never took anything more than a bit of lead pipe from Quinn's empty house across the street, and once a little silver trinket from a milliner I had up in the third floor front--"

"He used to do little things like that when he was a child, don't you remember, dear?"

"It's his father in him, Lilly. Maybe you don't know it, but that's what killed my Annie, that same streak which was the ruination of a fine, educated man like his father. But Harry's got too much of his mother in him to be all bad; he--"

"Of course he has, dear."

"To get back to our coming East, Lilly. One night he--Harry brought me home a brooch, Lilly. A right pretty gold one with a garnet in. It used to hurt him that I never had any finery. He wouldn't take anything to buy drink and bad times for himself like other boys, but he'd steal something to bring home to his old grandmother. All that night, Lilly, down there in the bas.e.m.e.nt kitchen, I was nearly crazy trying to get out of him where he got that brooch. The next day they was after him, for it and some--nickel-plated facets from out of the washroom where he was working. They hushed it up. Old Judge Mayer, you remember his sister used to board with me. But the next time there was a little trouble--this time a--a little finger ring--not even all gold. I--we--we had to sell out and come here--where we could be swallowed up."

"Oh, Harry, Harry, how could he!"

"Wasn't his fault. It wasn't the place for him out there any more with everybody against a poor orphan. I've cut him off, Lilly, from his bad ways out there. You're the first I've seen or heard of since we left, and I don't want you to even write it to your folks that we're here.

There's the little matter of that ring--not even all gold--and--some lead pipe--forgotten, now--please G.o.d, but they might want him back for it--that's how down on him they are. He's a good boy, Harry is, Lilly, with respect for his grandmother. He's had a slip up or two, but the best of us have that, haven't we?"

"Yes."

"It's to be expected. A boy can't shake off his inheritance overnight, can he? Can he?"

"No, I suppose not, dear."

"Don't let on, Lilly. He's sensitive. We'll win yet, Harry and me will.

The world hasn't taken much stock of a poor little bas.e.m.e.nt orphan, but with the kind of mother he had, his grandmother will live yet to see the day that it does take account of him. Harry's right smart with draping and decorating around the house, and if I do say it, when he dresses a window the traffic stops. He's a great one for reading and following up the magazines, too. Smart. I'd stake my all on a boy that has got it in him to treat his grandmother with the gentleness he does. And children!

There is not one on the street he can pa.s.s for love of them. A boy like that cannot be all bad, can he, Lilly?"

Her eyes magnified with the glaze of tears so that one blink would have overflowed them, Lilly laid her lips to the veiny old hand, her voice down into the lap of blue-checkered ap.r.o.n.

"We mothers--Mrs. Schum--G.o.d, how we love to suffer to them!"

"We!"

Her face in the tired old lap, the little room seeming to crowd up with voice, Lilly talked on then, until the little clock inset into a china plate ticked out an hour, and in the kitchen, Harry, with all his old capacity for meekness, lay asleep with his head in his arms and the little dinner cloying on the stove.

"I'm afraid my old brain don't take it all in, Lilly. You mean your mother--father--none of them--know?"

"It isn't for you to understand, dear. The mere telling of it has somehow eased things. We are bits of seaweed, dear Mrs. Schum, tossed up on the same sh.o.r.es. You and your fugitive from environment. Me and mine.

If your secret is to be mine, mine must be yours."