"Ain't it?" Max growled as he turned on Abe with a menacing glare. "Well, it's a wonder it ain't, the way you are sticking it into other people's business. If you think I care what you think about what my boy eats for his lunch you are making a big mistake. I could take care of my own boy, Potash, and I am just as much obliged if you would do the same." Abe flushed a fiery red and rose to his feet. "I guess I would go into the next car," he said. "You could go a whole lot farther for all I care!" Max retorted, and immediately buried his head between the open pages of a conservative evening paper. Abe had not offended in vain, however, for after dinner that night, when Sidney sought his father in the Koblins' suite at Riesenberger's cottage, the King was in an ugly mood. "Say, Pop," Sidney began, "how about you for twenty till Saturday night?" "What d'ye mean?" Max bellowed. "Ain't I given you ten dollars only this morning?" Sidney laughed uncomfortably. "Ain't you the old tightwad!" he said. Max's reply to this observation was quite unprecedented in all Sidney's experience. It took the form of an open-handed blow on the cheek, the first ever administered by his indulgent parent since Sidney's infancy. Forthwith began a family row that brought the entire household--guests, servants and proprietress--on the run to the Koblin apartments. When Mrs. Koblin's frightened screams had ceased, and Max Koblin had calmed down sufficiently to offer an evasive explanation, the guests trooped back to the piazza, and three games of auction pinocle, which had started in the dining-room after the tables had been cleared, came to an abrupt close. Instead, the players foregathered with the other guests in the porch rockers. There they discussed the incident until nearly midnight; and, as no one had been an eyewitness of the affray, there were as many versions of it as may be mathematically demonstrated where one blow is struck among three persons. Some had it that Sidney had attacked his father and others that Mrs. Koblin had assaulted Sidney, but a large feminine majority favoured a construction of the matter as one of wife-beating. Abe alone correctly surmised the turn that Sidney's affairs had taken and he sat on the piazza in conscience-stricken solitude long after all the other guests had retired. He blamed himself for the entire affair and he smoked cigar after cigar before he sought his bed. As he walked up the broad staircase he met Max Koblin at the first landing. "Max," he said, "where are you going this time of night?" Max stopped short. His eyes blazed in a face so careworn and haggard that, to Abe, he seemed to have aged ten years since their meeting that afternoon. "This is what comes of your butting in!" Max cried bitterly. "The boy went out right after we had the fuss and he ain't come back." He paused to choke down a hysterical lump in his throat. "And God knows what's become of him!" he sobbed as he continued down the stairs.