A door slammed in an outer hall, as she was still stirring and looking down into the stew.
She supped up bird-like from the tip of her spoon, smacking for flavor.
"I made you an asafetida-bag, Edwin, it's in your drawer. Don't you leave this house to-morrow without it on."
"Gee whiz! if you got my Argentine stamps mixed!"
"Your father'll be home any minute now. Don't spoil your appetite."
"I got ninety in manual training, mother."
"All the other fellows only got seventy and eighty."
He entered at that, submitting to a kiss upon an averted cheek.
"I shopped all morning to get okra to go in it for your father."
She tiptoed up to kiss him again, this time at the back of the neck, carefully averting her floury hands.
"Mamma's boy! I made you three pen-wipers to-day out of the old red table-cover."
He set up a jiggling, his great feet coming down with a clatter.
He flopped down, hooking his heels in the chair-rung.
At sixteen's stage of cruel hazing into man's estate Edwin Ross, whose voice, all in a breath, could slip up from the quality of rock in the drilling to the more brittle octave of early-morning milk-bottles, wore a nine shoe and a thirteen collar. His first long trousers were let down and taken in. His second taken up and let out. When shaving promised to become a manly accomplishment, his complexion suddenly clouded, postponing that event until long after it had become a hirsute necessity. When he smiled apoplectically above his first waistcoat and detachable collar, his Adam's apple and his mother's heart fluttered.
"Blow-cat Dennis is going to City College."
"He only got seventy in manual training."
"Tell them things to your father, Edwin; I 'ain't got the say-so."
"His father's only a bookkeeper, too, and they live 'way up on a Hundred and Forty-fourth near Third."
"I'm willing to scrimp and save for it, Edwin; but in the end I haven't got the say-so, and you know it."
"The boys that are going to college got to register now for the High School College Society."
"Your father, Edwin, is the one to tell that to."
"Other fellers' mothers put in a word for 'em."
"I do, Edwin; you know I do! It only aggravates him--There's papa now, Edwin, coming in. Help mamma dish up. Put this soup at papa's place and this at yours. There's only two plates left from last night."