d sit and sit on the porch
every night with you and mamma. When Izzy comes out once a week to take
me to a show, how he fusses and fusses you hear for yourselves. For a
girl nearly--twenty--it ain't no joke."

"It ain't, papa; it ain't no joke for me to have to take her in and out
every week, lemme tell you."

"Eat your supper, Poil; not eating don't get you nowheres with your
papa."

"I--I don't want nothin'."

A tear wiggle--waggled down Miss Binswanger's smooth cheek, and she
fumbled at her waist-line for her handkerchief.

"I--I--I just wish sometimes I--was dead."

Mr. Binswanger shot his bald head outward suddenly, as a turtle darts
forward from its case, and rapped the table noisily with his fist
clutched around an upright fork, and his voice climbing to a falsetto.

"I--I wish in my life I had never heard the name of the city."

"Now, Julius, don't begin."

"Ruination it has brought me. My boy won't stay by me in the store so he
can't gallivant in the city; my goil won't talk to me no more for
madness because we ain't in the city; my wife eats out of me my heart
because we ain't in the city. For supper every night when I come home
tired from the store all I get served to me is the city. I can't swallow
no more! Money you all think I got what grows on trees, just because I
give all what I got. You should know how tight--how tight I got to
squeeze for it."

Mrs. Binswanger threw her arms apart in a wide gesture of helplessness.

"See, children, just as soon as I say a word, mad like a wet hen he gets
and right away puts on a poor mouth."

"Mad yet I shouldn't get with such nonsense. Too good they both got it.
Always I told you how we spoilt 'em."

"Don't holler so, pa."

"Don't tell me what to do! You with your pretty man suit and your hair
and finger-nails polished like a shoe-shine. You go to the city, and I
stay home where I belong in my own house."

"His house--always his house!"

"Ya, a eight-room house and running water she's got if she wants to have
company. Your mamma didn't have no eight rooms and finished attic when
she was your age. In back of a feed store she sat me. Too good you got
it, I say. New hard-wood floors down-stairs didn't I have to put in, and
electric light on the porch so your company don't break his neck? Always
something new, and now no more I can't eat a meal in peace."

"'Sh-h-h-h, Julius!"

"I should worry that the Teitlebaums and the Landauers live in a fine