over the South Park Avenue flat. She quarrelled wholesomely and
regularly with Polish Anna. Alternately she threatened Anna with
dismissal and Anna threatened Ma Mandle with impending departure. This
had been going on, comfortably, for fifteen years. Ma Mandle held the
purse and her son filled it. Hugo paid everything from the rent to the
iceman, and this without once making his mother feel a beneficiary. She
possessed an infinitesimal income of her own, left her out of the ruins
of her dead husband's money, but this Hugo always waved aside did she
essay to pay for her own movie ticket or an ice cream soda. "Now, now!
None of that, Ma. Your money's no good to-night."

When he returned from a New York business trip he usually brought her
two gifts, one practical, the other absurd. She kissed him for the first
and scolded him for the second, but it was the absurdity, fashioned of
lace, or silk, or fragile stuff, that she pridefully displayed to her
friends.

"Look what my son Hugo brought me. I should wear a thing like that in my
old days. But it's beautiful anyway, h'm? He's got taste, my son Hugo."

In the cool of the evening you saw them taking a slow and solemn walk
together, his hand on her arm. He surprised her with matinée tickets in
pairs, telling her to treat one of her friends. On Anna's absent
Thursdays he always offered to take dinner downtown. He brought her
pound boxes of candy tied with sly loops and bands of gay satin ribbon
which she carefully rolled and tucked away in a drawer. He praised her
cooking, and teased her with elephantine playfulness, and told her that
she looked like a chicken in that hat. Oh, yes, indeed! Mrs. Mandle was
a spoiled old lady.