"Na, na, Becky; for why should I have a long face? To-morrow I buy me a false face like on Valentine's Day, and then you don't have to look at me no more."
"See! Right away mad he gets with me. Izzy, them noodles I made only on your account; in the city you don't get 'em like that, huh? Some more _Kartoffel Salad_, Julius?"
"Ya, but not so much! My face don't suit my wife and children yet, that's the latest."
"Three times a day all week, Izzy, I ask your papa if he don't feel right. 'Yes,' he says, always 'yes.' Like I says to Poil, what's got him since he's in the new store I don't know."
"_Ach_, you--the whole three of you make me sick! What you want me to do, walk the tight rope to show what a good humor I got?"
"No; we want, Julius, that you should come home every night with a long face on you till for the neighbors I'm ashamed."
"A little more _Kartoffel Salad_, Becky? Not so much!"
"Like they don't talk enough about us already. With a young lady in the house we live out here where the dogs won't bark at us."
"I only wish all girls had just so good a home as Pearlie."
"Aw, papa, that ain't no argument! I'd rather live in a coop in the city, where a girl can have some life, than in a palace out in this hole."
"Hole, she calls a room like this! A dining-room set she sits on what her grandfather made with his own hands out of the finest cherry wood--"
"For a young girl can you blame her? She feels like if she lived in the city she would meet people and Izzy's friends. Talk for yourself, Poil."
"I--"
"Boys like Ignatz Landauer and Max Teitlebaum, what he meets at the Young Men's Association. Talk for yourself, Poil."
"I--"
"Poil's got a tenant for the house, Julius. I ain't afraid to tell you."
"I don't listen to such nonsense."
"From the real-estate offices they sent 'em, Julius, and Poil took 'em through. Furnished off our hands they take it for three months, till their bungalow is done for 'em. Forty dollars for a house like ours on the wrong side of town away from the improvements ain't so bad. A grand young couple, no children. Izzy thinks it's a grand idea, too, Julius. He says if we move to the city he don't have to live in such a dark little hall-room no more. To the hotel he can come with us on family rates just so cheap. Ain't it, Izzy?"
Mr. Isadore Binswanger broke his conspiracy of silence gently, like a skeptic at breakfast taps his candle-blown egg with the tip of a silver spoon once, twice, thrice, then opens it slowly, suspiciously.
"I said, pa, that with forty dollars a month rent from the house, and--"
"In my own house, where I belong and can afford, I stay. I'm an old man, and--"
"Not so fast, pa, not so fast! I only said that with forty dollars from the house for three months this winter you can live almost as cheap in the city as here. And for me to come out every Saturday night to take Pearlie to the theater ain't such a cinch, neither. Take a boy like Max Teitlebaum, he likes her well enough to take her to the theater hisself, but by the time he gets out here for her he ain't go no enjoyment left in him."
"When a young man likes well enough a young lady, a forty-five-minutes street-car ride is like nothing."
"Aw, papa, in story-books such talk is all right, but when a young man has got to change cars at Low Bridge and wait for the Owl going home it don't work out so easy--does it Izzy, does it, mamma?"
"For three years, pa, even before I got my first job in the city, always mamma and Pearlie been wantin' a few months away."
"With my son in the city losing every two months his job I got enough city to last me so long as I live. When in my store I need so bad a good young man for the new-fashioned advertising and stock, to the city he has to go for a salesman's job. When a young man can't get along in business with his old father I don't go running after him in the city."
"Pa, for heaven's sakes don't begin that! I'm sick of listening to it. Newton ain't no place for a fellow to waste his time in."
"What else you do in the city, I like to know!"
"Julius, leave Izzy alone when one night a week he comes home."
"For my part you don't need to move to the city. I only said to Pearlie and ma, when they asked me, that a few months in a family hotel like the Wellington can't bust you. For me to come out home every Saturday night to take Pearlie into the theater ain't no cinch. In town there's plenty of grand boys that I know who live at the Wellington--Ignatz Landauer, Max Teitlebaum, and all that crowd. Yourself I've heard you say how much you like Max."
"For why, when everybody is moving out to Newton, we move away?"
"That's just it, papa, now with the interurban boom you got the chance to sublet. Ain't it, mamma and Izzy?"
"Sure it--"
"Ya, ya; I know just what's coming, but for me Newton is good enough."
"What about your children, Julius? You ain't the only one in the family."
"Twenty-five year I've lived in this one place since the store was only so big as this room, and on this house we didn't have a second story. A home that I did everything but build with my own hands I don't move out of so easy. Such ideas you let your children pump you with, Becky."
"See, children, you say he can't never refuse me nothing; listen how he won't let me get in a word crossways before he snaps me off. If we sublet, Julius, we--"
"Sublet we don't neither! I should ride forty-five minutes into the city after my hard day's work, when away from the city forty-five minutes every one else is riding. My house is my house, my yard is my yard. I don't got no ideas like my high-toned son and daughter for a hotel where to stretch your feet you got to pay for the space."
"Listen to your papa, children, even before I got my mouth open good how he talks back to a wife that nursed him through ten years of bronchitis. All he thinks I'm good enough for is to make poultices and rub on his chest goose grease."
"_Ach_, Becky, don't fuss so with your old man. Look, even the cat you got scared. Here, Billy--here, kitty, kitty."
"Ain't I asked you often enough, Julius, not to feed on the carpet a piece of meat to the cat? 'Sh-h-h-h, Billy, scat! All that I'm good enough for is to clean up. How he talks to his wife yet!"
Miss Binswanger caught her breath on the crest of a sob and pushed her untouched plate toward the center of the table; tears swam on a heavy film across her eyes and thickened her gaze and voice.
"This--ain't--no--hole for--for a girl to live in."
"All I wish is you should never live in a worse."
"I ain't got nothin' here, papa, but sit and 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 family hotel in Seventy-second Street. Such people with big stores in Sixth Avenue can buy and sell us. Not even if I could afford it would I want to give up my house and my porch, where I can smoke my pipe, and my comforts that I worked for all my life, and move to the city in rooms so little and so far up I can't afford to pay for 'em. I should give up my chickens and my comforts!"