"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. "Why, I've got something, ma,
right here in my heart for you that--"

"Leon, be careful your shirt-front!"