Hanneh Hayyeh ran in to her husband, a stoop-shouldered, care-crushed man who was leaning against the bed, his swollen feet outstretched, counting the pennies that totaled his day’s earnings. “Jake Safransky!” she cried excitedly, “you got to come in and give a look on my painting before you go to sleep.” “Oi, let me alone. Give me only a rest.” Too intoxicated with the joy of achievement to take no for an answer, she dragged him into the doorway. “Nu? How do you like it? Do I know what beautiful is?” “But how much money did you spend out on that paint?” “It was my own money,” she said, wiping the perspiration off her face with a corner of her apron. “Every penny I earned myself from the extra washing.” “But you had ought save it up for the bad times. What’ll you do when the cold weather starts in and the pushcart will not wheel itself out?” “I save and pinch enough for myself. This I done in honor for my son. I want my Aby to lift up his head in the world. I want him to be able to invite even the President from America to his home and shame himself.” “You’d pull the bananas off a blind man’s pushcart to bring to your Aby. You know nothing from holding tight to a dollar and saving a penny to a penny like poor people should.” “What do I got from living if I can’t have a little beautifulness in my life? I don’t allow for myself the ten cents to go to a moving picture that I’m crazy to see. I never yet treated myself to an ice-cream soda even for a holiday. Shining up the house for Aby is my only pleasure.” “Yah, but it ain’t your house. It’s the landlord’s.” “Don’t I live in it? I soak in pleasure from every inch of my kitchen. Why, I could kiss the grand white color on the walls. It lights up my eyes like sunshine in the room.” Her glance traveled from the newly painted walls to the geranium on the window-sill, and back to her husband’s face. “Jake!” she cried, shaking him, “ain’t you got eyes? How can you look on the way it dances the beautifulness from every corner and not jump in the air from happiness?” “I’m only thinking on the money you spent out on the landlord’s house. Look only on me! I’m black from worry, but no care lays on your head. It only dreams itself in you how to make yourself for an American and lay in every penny you got on fixing out the house like the rich.” “I’m sick of living like a pig with my nose to the earth, all the time only pinching and scraping for bread and rent. So long my Aby is with America, I want to make myself for an American. I could tear the stars out from heaven for my Aby’s wish.” Her sunken cheeks were flushed and her eyes glowed with light as she gazed about her. “When I see myself around the house how I fixed it up with my own hands, I forget I’m only a nobody. It makes me feel I’m also a person like Mrs. Preston. It lifts me with high thoughts.”