"'Sh-h-h-h, chickey--sh-h-h-h! Back in the yard I can't keep that rooster, Julius. And to-day for thirty cents I had that paling in the garden fence fixed, too. Honest, to keep a yard like ours going is an expense all the time. People in the city without yards is lucky." "In all Newton there ain't one like ours. Look, Becky, at that white-rose bush flowering so late just like she was a bride." "When Izzy was home always, we didn't have the expense of weeding." "Now when he comes home all he does is change neckties and make trouble." "_Ach_, my moon vines! Don't get your chair so close, Julius. Look how those white flowers open right in your face. One by one like big stars coming out." "M-m-m-m and smell, Becky, how good!" "Here, lemme pull them heavy shoes off for you, papa. Listen, there goes that oriole up in the cherry-tree again. Listen to the thrills he's got in him. Pull, Julius; I ain't no derrick!" "Ah-h-h, how good it feels to get 'em off! Now light my pipe, Becky. Always when you light it, better it tastes. Hold--there--make out of your hand a cup--there--pu-pu-pu--there! Now sit down by me, Becky!" "Move over." "_Ach_, Becky, when we got our little home like this, with a yard so smooth as my hand, where we don't need shoes or collars, and with our own fruit right under our noses, for why ain't you satisfied?" "For myself, Julius, believe me it's too good, but for Poil we--" "Look all what you can see right here from our porch! Look there through the trees at the river; right in front of our eyes it bends for us. Look what a street we live on. We should worry it ain't in the booming part. Quiet like a temple, with trees on it older as you and me together." "The caterpillars is bad this year, Julius; trees ain't so cheap, neither. In the city such worries they ain't got." "For what with a place like this, Becky, with running water and--" "It's Poil, Julius. Not a thing a beau-ti-fool girl like Poil has out here." "Nonsense. It's a sin she should want a better place as this. Ain't she got a plush parlor and a piano and--" "It's like Izzy says, Julius: there's too many fine goils in the city for the boys to come out here on a forty-five-minute ride. What boys has she got out here, Mike Donnely and--" "_Ach!_" "That's what we need; just something like that should happen to us. But, believe me, it's happened before when a girl ain't got no better to pick from. How I worry about it you should know." "Becky, with even such talk you make me sick." "Mark my word, it's happened before, Julius! That's why I say, Julius, a few months in the city this winter and she could meet the right young man. Take a boy like Max Teitlebaum. Yourself you said how grand and steady he is. Twice with Izzy he's been out here, and not once his eyes off Poil did he take." "Teitlebaum, with a store twice so big as ours on Sixth Avenue, don't need to look for us--twice they can buy and sell us."