"Give me the dollar, pa, for voting against Europe. Don't let her
hypnotize you like she always does. Down with Europe! I say. We should
cross the ocean and get our feet wet, eh, pa?"

He waggled a pinch of her flushed cheek between his thumb and forefinger
and dived into his pocket.

"Baby-la, you!" he said, crossing her palm; and she was out and past
him, imprinting a kiss on the crest of the bald horseshoe and tossing a
glance as quick as Pierrette's over one shoulder.

On the echo of the slamming door, her eyes shining with conviction and
her face suddenly old with prophecy, Miriam turned upon her mother.

"You see, mamma, you see! Seventeen, and nothing in her head but
Brighton Beach and soda-water fountains and joy-riding. Just you watch;
some day she'll meet up with some dinky fakir or ribbon clerk at one of
those places, and the first thing you know for a son-in-law you'll have
a crook."

"Miriam!"

"Yes, you will! Those are the only chances a girl gets if she's not in
the swim."

"Listen to her, ma, and then you blame me for not bringing any of the
fellows round here for her to meet. You don't catch me doing it, the way
she thinks she's better than they are and gives them the high hand. Not
muchy!"

"I should worry for the kind you bring, Izzy."

"As nice boys Izzy has brought home, Miriam, as ever in my life I would
want to meet."

"Yes, but you see for yourself the way the society fellows, like Sol
Blumenthal and Laz Herzog, hang round the Lillianthal girls. I always
got to take a back seat, and maybe you think I don't know it."

"I never heard that on ships young men was so plentiful."

"She wants to land an Italian count and she'll just about land a
barber."

Mr. Binswanger peered suddenly over the rim of his paper. "A no-count
yet is what we need in the family. Get right away such ideas out your
head. All my life I 'ain't worked so hard to spend my money on the old
country. In America I made it and in America I spend it. Now just stop
it, right away, too."

"Go to it, pa!"

Suddenly Miss Binswanger let fall her head into her cupped hands. Tears
trickled through. "I--I just wish that I--I hadn't been born! Why--did
you move up-town, then, where everybody does things, if--if--"

Her father's reply came in a sudden avalanche. "For why? Because then,
just like now, you nagged me. You can take it from me, just so happy as
now was me and mamma down by Rivington Street. I'm a plain man and