"Your comforts, always your comforts! Do I think of _my_ comforts?"
"Ma, don't you and pa begin now with your fussing. Like cats you are one minute and the next like doves."
"Don't boss me in my own house, Izzy! So afraid your papa is that he won't get all the comforts what's coming to him. I wish you was so good to me as you are to that cat, Julius--twice I asked you not to feed him on the carpet. Scat, Billy!"
"Pass me some noodles, maw."
"Good ones, eh, Izzy?"
"Fine, maw."
"I ask you, is it more comfortable, Julius, for me to be cooped up in the city in rooms that all together ain't as big as my kitchen? No, but of my children I think too besides my own comforts."
"Ya, ya; now, Becky, don't get excited. Look at your mamma, Pearlie; shame on her, eh? How mad she gets at me till blue like her wrapper her face gets."
"My house and my yard so smooth like your hand, and my big porch and my new laundry with patent wringer is more to me as a hotel in the city. But when I got a young lady daughter with no attentions and no prospects I can't think always of my own comforts."
"Ya, ya, Becky; don't get excited."
"Don't ya--ya me, neither."
"_Ach_, old lady, that only means how much I love you."
"We got a young lady daughter; do you want that she should sit and sit and sit till for ever we got a daughter, only she ain't young no more. I tell you out here ain't no place for a young goil--what has she got?"
"Yes, papa; what have I got? The trees for company!"
"Do you see, Julius, in the new bungalows any families moving in with young ladies? Would even your son Isadore what ain't a young lady stay out here when he was old enough to get hisself a job in the city?"
"That a boy should leave his old father like that!"
"Wasn't you always kickin' to me, pa, that there wasn't a future in the business after the transaction came--wasn't you?"
"No more arguments you get with me!"
"What chance, Julius, I ask you, has a goil like Poil got out here in Newton? To sit on the front porch nights with Meena Schlossman don't get her nowheres; to go to the moving--pictures with Eddie Goldstone, what can't make salt for hisself, ain't nothing for a goil that hopes to do well for herself. If she only looks out of the corner of her eye at Mike Donnely three fits right away you take!"
"_Gott_, that's what we need yet!"
"See, even when I mention it, look at him, Poil, how red he gets! But should she sit and sit?"
"_Ach_, such talk makes me sick. Plenty girls outside the city gets better husbands as in it. Na, na, mamma, did you find me in the city?"
"_Ach_, Julius, stop foolin'. When I got you for a husband enough trouble I found for myself."
"In my business like it goes down every day, Becky, I ain't got the right to make a move."
"See, the poor mouth again! Just so soon as we begin to talk about things. A man that can afford only last March to take out a new five-thousand-dollar life-insurance policy--"
"'Sh-h-h-h, Becky."
"For why shouldn't your children know it? Yes, up-stairs in my little green box along with my cameo ear-rings and gold watch-chain I got it put away, children. A new life-insurance policy on light-blue paper, with a red seal I put only last week. When a man that never had any insurance before takes it out so easy he can afford it."
"Not--not because I could afford it I took it, Becky, but with business low I squeeze myself a little to look ahead."
"Only since we got the new store you got so tight. Now you got more you don't let it go so easy. A two-story brick with plate-glass fronts now, and always a long face."
"A long face! You should be worried like I with big expenses and big stock and little business. Why you think I take out a policy so late at such a terrible premium? Why? So when I'm gone you got something besides debts!"
"Just such a poor mouth you had, Julius, when we wanted on the second story."
"I ask you, Becky: one thing that you and the children ever wanted ain't I found a way to get it for you? I ask you?"
"Ya, but a woman that was always economical like me you didn't need to refuse. Never for myself I asked for things."
"_Ach_, ma and pa, don't begin that on the one night a week I'm home."
"So economical all my life I been. Till Izzy was ashamed to go to school in 'em I made him pants out of yours. You been a good husband, but I been just as good a wife, and don't you forget it!"
"Na, na, old lady; don't get excited again. But right here at my table, even while I hate you 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 shambled toward the door on legs bent to the cruel curve of rheumatism. The sun had dropped into a bursting west, and was as red as a mist of blood. Its reflection lay on the smooth lawn and hung in the dark shadows of quiet trees, and through the fulvous haze of evening's first moment came the chirruping of crickets.
"I wish I was so far away as the bottom of the ocean."
The tight-springed screen door sprang shut on his words, and his footsteps shambled across the wide ledge of porch. A silence fell across the little dining-table, and Miss Binswanger wiped at fresh tears, but her mother threw her a confident gesture of reassurance.
"Don't say no more now for a while, children."
Mr. Isadore Binswanger inserted a toothpick between his lips and stretched his limbs out at a hypotenuse from the chair.
"I'm done. I knew the old man would jump all over me."
"Izzy, you and Poil go on now; for the theater you won't catch the seven-ten car if you don't hurry. Leave it to me, Poil; I can tell by your papa's voice we got him won. How he fusses like just now don't make no difference; you know how your papa is. Here, Poil, lemme help you with your coat."
"I--I don't want to go, mamma!"
"_Ach_, now, Poil, you--"
"If you're coming with me you'd better get a hustle. I ain't going to hang around this graveyard all evening."
Her brother rose to his slightly corpulent five feet five and shook his trousers into their careful creases. His face was a soft-fleshed rather careless replica of his mother's, with a dimple-cleft chin, and a delicate down of beard that made his shaving a manly accomplishment rather than a hirsute necessity.
"Here on the sideboard is your hat, Poil--powder a little around your eyes. Just leave papa to me, Poil. _Ach_, how sweet that hat with them roses out of stock looks on you! Come out here the side way--_ach_, how nice it is out here on the porch! How short the days get--dark nearly already at seven! Good-by, children. Izzy, take your sister by the arm; the whole world don't need to know you're her brother."
"Leave the door on the latch, mamma."
"Have a good time, children. Ain't you going to say good-by to your papa, Poil? Your worst enemy he ain't. Julius, leave Billy alone--honest, he likes that cat better as his family. Tell your papa good-by, Poil."