Then the suave Lucio Mazzello, a galantuomo if there ever was one, a tailor by trade and elegant to a fault in his piped jackets and well-cut trousers, proposed a toast. “Let’s drink to this little child whose birth is synonymous with the light of the new electricity on Bleecker Street. She is truly a child of fortune to be born not only in the year of the new century but in the new era of progress. Alla salute e alla fortuna!”

“Alla salute!” everyone echoed, and they raised their glasses of wine.

And the toast was not just to the baby in Umbertina’s arms; it was to the Longobardis and their future, it was to the new century and the new country and their place in it and the confidence that rose in each breast like an excitement that couldn’t be stilled.

Serafino still busied himself around the expanded store on Third Street, but the days of brutal work in all weather, long hours for a dollar, and large doses of humiliation were over; his name was on the storefront—that much he could read—and he was proud. He spent more time now at Scalise’s bar, talking to his cronies and remembering the old days. His face was round, his head bald and shining, his light eyes hooded now by the droopy eyelids that gave him his last nickname, Occhi Chiusi, old shut-eyes.

Umbertina got pleasure from hard work, from giving orders and supervising her growing family, who were like so many soldiers in her own army waging the war of American success. Her son Paul laughed and said she should have been a union organizer, for though she was suspicious of politics and group action she believed in justice and fair play for workers. She despised those who broke strikes in order to work for low wages, who didn’t speak up their grievances, were self-denying, and still dependent on a padrone. But her concern was only for her family, not for some abstract common good.

Jake and Ben still turned in their paychecks to the common fund. Everything, Umbertina said, should go into the common till and be doled out according to need, and she took offense when Domenico told her she was a good socialista. Pina and Anna helped in the store, did the housework, and took care of the babies. Umbertina expected a lot from everyone, but with Serafino she was now indulgent. “Rest, rest, old man,” she’d tell him. And as he sat dozing in his rocking chair near the stove in the grocery she would nod her head toward him and tell her customers proudly, “His sons work for him now.”