“Why are you keeping Benny here so long?” she shouted at the teacher as she flung open the door. “If you had my bitter heart, you would send him home long ago and not wait till I got to come for him.” The teacher turned calmly and consulted her record-cards. “Benny Safron? He wasn’t present this morning.” “Not here?” shrieked Hanneh Breineh. “I pushed him out myself he should go. The children didn’t want to take him, and I had no time. Woe is me! Where is my child?” She began pulling her hair and beating her breast as she ran into the street. Mrs. Pelz was busy at a pushcart, picking over some spotted apples, when she heard the clamor of an approaching crowd. A block off she recognized Hanneh Breineh, her hair disheveled, her clothes awry, running toward her with her yelling baby in her arms, the crowd following. “Friend mine,” cried Hanneh Breineh, falling on Mrs. Pelz’s neck, “I lost my Benny, the best child of all my children.” Tears streamed down her red, swollen eyes as she sobbed. “Benny! mine heart, mine life! Oi-i-i!” Mrs. Pelz took the frightened baby out of the mother’s arms. “Still yourself a little! See how you’re frightening your child.” “Woe to me! Where is my Benny? Maybe he’s killed already by a car. Maybe he fainted away from hunger. He didn’t eat nothing all day long. Gottuniu! Pity yourself on me!” She lifted her hands full of tragic entreaty. “People, my child! Get me my child! I’ll go crazy out of my head! Get me my child, or I’ll take poison before your eyes!” “Still yourself a little!” pleaded Mrs. Pelz. “Talk not to me!” cried Hanneh Breineh, wringing her hands. “You’re having all your children. I lost mine. Every good luck comes to other people. But I didn’t live yet to see a good day in my life. Mine only joy, mine Benny, is lost away from me.” The crowd followed Hanneh Breineh as she wailed through the streets, leaning on Mrs. Pelz. By the time she returned to her house the children were back from school; but seeing that Benny was not there, she chased them out in the street, crying: “Out of here, you robbers, gluttons! Go find Benny!” Hanneh Breineh crumpled into a chair in utter prostration. “Oi weh! he’s lost! Mine life; my little bird; mine only joy! How many nights I spent nursing him when he had the measles! And all that I suffered for weeks and months when he had the whooping-cough! How the eyes went out of my head till I learned him how to walk, till I learned him how to talk! And such a smart child! If I lost all the others, it wouldn’t tear me so by the heart.” She worked herself up into such a hysteria, crying, and tearing her hair, and hitting her head with her knuckles, that at last she fell into a faint. It took some time before Mrs. Pelz, with the aid of neighbors, revived her. “Benny, mine angel!” she moaned as she opened her eyes. Just then a policeman came in with the lost Benny.