But he won't hold it long.
Believe me, I don't rest easy in my bed till Elsass comes after you. Not
for so big a contract like Rimsky's, but bigger--not for thirty concerts
but for fifty!"
"_Brava! Brava!_ There's a woman for you. More money than she knows what
to do with, and then not satisfied!"
She was still too tremulous for banter.
"'Not satisfied?' Why, Leon, I never stop praying my thanks for you!"
"All right then," he cried, laying his icy fingers on her cheek;
"to-morrow we'll call a _Mignon_--a regular old-fashioned Allen Street
prayer-party!"
"Leon, you mustn't make fun."
"Make fun of the sweetest girl in this room?"
"'Girl!' Ah, if I could only hold you by me this way, Leon! Always a
boy--with me--your poor old mother--your only girl. That's a fear I
suffer with, Leon--to lose you to a--girl! That's how selfish the mother
of such a wonder-child like mine can get to be."
"All right. Trying to get me married off again. Nice! Fine!"
"Is it any wonder I suffer, son? Twenty-one years to have kept you by me
a child. A boy that's never in his life was out after midnight except to
catch trains. A boy that never has so much as looked at a girl and could
have looked at princesses. To have kept you all these years--mine--is it
any wonder, son, I never stop praying my thanks for you? You don't
believe Hancock, son, the way he keeps teasing you always you should
have a--what he calls--affair--a love-affair? Such talk is not nice,
Leon--an affair!"
"Love-affair poppycock!" said Leon Kantor, lifting his mothers face and
kissing her on eyes about ready to tear.
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