A couple of minutes later, Sophie stepped out to join her. "Fresh air," her older sister said gratefully. "It's so stuffy in there."

Flora sent her a sympathetic look. "And you were cooped up in front of your sewing machine all day before that," she said. "No wonder you want to get all the air you can." She wouldn't have called New York City 's air, full of smoke and soot and fumes, fresh, but if her sister wanted to, she wouldn't argue, either.

Sophie stepped down to the edge of the landing and looked over the iron rail. It was dark down there, with nothing worth mentioning to see. Not really to Flora- not really to anyone- Sophie said, "I should throw myself off."

Alarmed, Flora hurried over to her and put an arm around her shoulder, dragging her away from the rail. "What's wrong?" she demanded. "Is it something at work? I know they've been exploiting you without mercy, giving you much too much to try to do. The way you come home every night-"

Sophie shook her head. "It's nothing to do with work," she said, "and they aren't working me any harder than they were before. 'Exploiting'!" She laughed softly, though not in a way that said she thought anything was truly funny. "It's not anything- political."

"Then what is it?" Flora asked. "People don't talk about jumping off a building for nothing, you know."

Her sister's shiver had nothing to do with cold, no more than her laugh had had anything to do with mirth. "What is it, Flora? Do you really want to know?"

"Of course I do," Flora answered, indignant now. "I'm your sister. That counts for more than politics, even if we don't agree all the time."

"Yes, but it was politics you thought of first." Sophie sighed. "I suppose I may as well tell you. I have to tell someone-and if I don't, it'll be plain enough before long, anyway."

"What are you talking about?" Flora said. "Just come out and say it, if you're going to."

"All right, then." But Sophie needed to gather herself before she brought the words out, all in one low-voiced rush: "Flora, I'm going to have a baby."

Her sister stared. She felt as if she'd walked in front of a train without seeing or hearing it coming. "How did it happen?" she whispered.

Dimly lit by the lamps from the front room, Sophie's face twisted. "How did it happen? There's only one way I know of. Yossel was going into the Army, and I didn't know when I'd see him again or if I'd see him again, and I wanted to give him something special before he left. And so I… and so we-" She didn't go on, and then, after a moment, she did: "I gave him something special, didn't I?" All at once, without warning, she started to cry.

"Does mother know you're- expecting?" Flora asked. She put her arm around her sister, who clung to her like a survivor from a torpedoed liner.

Sophie shook her head violently against Flora's shoulder. "I couldn't tell her," she exclaimed. "I told you because-" She gulped and stopped.

Flora didn't have any trouble figuring out what her sister hadn't said. Be cause you're the radical one, the one who believes in socialism and free love- something like that, anyhow. Flora had had men approach her on that basis, some of them men in the Socialist Party. But being free to love didn't mean you had to, and didn't mean loving was free from consequences, either.

Well, Sophie surely knew that now, even if she hadn't thought it through before. And Sophie wasn't some man trying to entice her into something sordid; she was her sister. "You're going to have to tell her sooner or later," Flora said gently, at which Sophie cried harder. Flora found another question: "Does Yossel know?"

Sophie shook her head again. "Every time I write him, I mean to tell him, but I just- can't."

"He's going to be your husband," Flora said. If he lives – she fought that thought down. "That makes it a little better. If he weren't in the Army, I'm sure he'd marry you right now." Sophie nodded. But if Yossel hadn't been going into the Army, Sophie probably wouldn't have given herself to him till they were married, in which case they wouldn't have had this problem.

"What am I going to do?" Sophie wailed- but softly, not wanting anyone inside to hear her.

The obvious answer was, You're going to have this baby. What sprang from that- Flora thought. At last, as if she'd just come up with a good campaign plank for a Congressional candidate, she clapped her hands together, also softly. "We won't tell mother," she said. "Mother is too perfectly conventional for words. All she'll do is throw a fit, and we don't need that, not now."

Sophie nodded again, looking at her with a mixture of hope and dread. "We can't keep from telling her forever, though," she warned. Of itself, one hand went to her belly. "Pretty soon, she'll know regardless of what we say."

"I wasn't finished," Flora said. "She has to know before she finds out that way. No, we won't tell her. We'll tell Papa. He won't get excited, the way Mother would; he has some common sense. And then, after he and we figure out what to say, he can tell Mother for us. He can be a-what's the word I want?-a buffer, that's it."

"I don't know." Again, Sophie's shiver had nothing to do with the cold.

"It has to be done. It will be better afterwards," Flora insisted, as if to someone with a toothache whom she was trying to get to go to the dentist.

Dread drove hope from her sister's face once more. "It won't be better," Sophie said quietly. "It will never be better, not any more."

Flora feared she was right. Even so, she opened the window that gave access to the fire escape and said, "Papa, can you come out here for a moment, please?"

Benjamin Hamburger had been standing over the kitchen table, kibitzing that game of chess-or maybe a new one by now-between David and Isaac. A puff of smoke rose from his pipe when he exhaled in surprise. "All the plots hatched out there, and this is the first time I've been invited," he remarked as he walked over and stepped out onto the landing.

That mild irony encouraged Flora. She closed the window. Isaac, David, Esther, and her mother all peered out toward the fire escape. They were used to her going out there. They were used to Sophie's going out there every so often. But when the two of them invited their father out, that was new, so it had to be suspect. Flora hadn't thought of that. Keeping the secret wouldn't be easy.

But, having started, she couldn't very well draw back. Her father was looking from her to Sophie and back again. If he wasn't the picture of curiosity, he'd do till a better one came along. Flora hoped Sophie would say what needed saying. When she didn't, Flora sighed and said, "Papa, we have to tell you something." Then she stopped. It wasn't easy, not when you got down to it.

Her father looked back and forth again. "What you have to tell me, it isn't good news," he said after a moment.

Flora nodded. That was true. While she was trying to find the best way to break the news, Sophie blurted, "Oh, Papa, I'm going to have a baby!" and burst into tears all over again.

Flora waited for the sky to fall. Sophie looked as if she wanted to sink through the iron floor. Their father stood quiet for a moment. Then, slowly, he said, "I wondered. There's a look women have in that condition, and you have it. And you're tired all the time, the way your mother was when she carried you. So yes, I wondered." He sighed. "I hoped not, but-"

"Will you tell Mother?" Flora asked, breathing more easily on finding his reaction was what she'd hoped it would be.

"She already knows, or wonders, too," her father said, which made Flora and Sophie both stare. He coughed a couple of times before he went on, "Remember, Sophie, she does your laundry, and-" He stopped, most abruptly, and coughed some more. After a moment, Flora understood why. Her face heated. Of all the things her father had never expected to do, discussing intimate bodily functions with his daughters had to rank high on the list.