should have to know it, Becky, in front of your
children I say it, I--I'm all mortgaged up, even on this house I'm--"

"On the old store you was mortgaged, too. In a business a man has got to
raise money on his assets. Didn't you always say that yourself? Business
is business."

"But I ain't got the business no more, Becky. I--I ain't said nothing,
but--but next week I close out the trimmed hats, Becky."

"Papa!"

"Trimmed hats! Julius, your finest department."

"For why I keep a department that don't pay its salt? I ain't like you
three; looks ain't everything."

"I know. I know. Ten years ago the biggest year what we ever had you
closed out the rubber coats, too, right in the middle of the season. A
poor mouth you'd have, Julius, if right now you was eating gold
dumplings instead of chicken dumplings."

"Na, na, Becky; don't pick on your old man."

"Since we been married I--"

"Aw, ma and pa, go hire a hall."

Suddenly Miss Binswanger clattered down her fork and pushed backward
from the table; tears streamed toward the corners of her mouth.

"That's always the way! What's the use of getting off the track? All we
want to say, papa, is we got a chance like we never had before to
sublet. Forty dollars a month, and no children. For three months we
could live in the city on family rates, and maybe for three months I'd
know I was alive. A--a girl's got feelings, papa! And, honest, it--it
ain't no trip, papa--what's forty-five minutes on the car with your
newspaper?--honest, papa, it ain't."

Mr. Isadore Binswanger drained a glass of water.

"Give 'er a chance, pa. The boys'll show her a swell time in the
city--Max Teitlebaum and all that crowd. It ain't no fun for me
traipsin' out after her, lemme tell you."

Mr. Binswanger pushed back his chair and rose from the table. His eyes,
the wet-looking eyes of age and asthma, retreated behind a network of
wrinkles as intricate as overhead wiring.

"I wish," he cried, "I was as far as the bottom of the ocean away from
such nonsense as I find in my own family. Up to my neck I'm full. Like
wolfs you are! On my neck I can feel your breath hot like a furnace.
Like wolfs you drive me till I--I can't stand it no more. All what I ask
is my peace--my little house, my little pipe, my little porch, and not
even my peace can I have. You--you're a pack of wolfs, I tell you--even
your fangs I can see, and--and I--I wish I was so far away as the bottom
of the ocean."

He sh