Mr. Isadore Binswanger broke his conspiracy of silence gently, like a skeptic at breakfast taps his candle-blown egg with the tip of a silver spoon once, twice, thrice, then opens it slowly, suspiciously. "I said, pa, that with forty dollars a month rent from the house, and--" "In my own house, where I belong and can afford, I stay. I'm an old man, and--" "Not so fast, pa, not so fast! I only said that with forty dollars from the house for three months this winter you can live almost as cheap in the city as here. And for me to come out every Saturday night to take Pearlie to the theater ain't such a cinch, neither. Take a boy like Max Teitlebaum, he likes her well enough to take her to the theater hisself, but by the time he gets out here for her he ain't go no enjoyment left in him." "When a young man likes well enough a young lady, a forty-five-minutes street-car ride is like nothing." "Aw, papa, in story-books such talk is all right, but when a young man has got to change cars at Low Bridge and wait for the Owl going home it don't work out so easy--does it Izzy, does it, mamma?" "For three years, pa, even before I got my first job in the city, always mamma and Pearlie been wantin' a few months away." "With my son in the city losing every two months his job I got enough city to last me so long as I live. When in my store I need so bad a good young man for the new-fashioned advertising and stock, to the city he has to go for a salesman's job. When a young man can't get along in business with his old father I don't go running after him in the city." "Pa, for heaven's sakes don't begin that! I'm sick of listening to it. Newton ain't no place for a fellow to waste his time in." "What else you do in the city, I like to know!" "Julius, leave Izzy alone when one night a week he comes home." "For my part you don't need to move to the city. I only said to Pearlie and ma, when they asked me, that a few months in a family hotel like the Wellington can't bust you. For me to come out home every Saturday night to take Pearlie into the theater ain't no cinch. In town there's plenty of grand boys that I know who live at the Wellington--Ignatz Landauer, Max Teitlebaum, and all that crowd. Yourself I've heard you say how much you like Max." "For why, when everybody is moving out to Newton, we move away?" "That's just it, papa, now with the interurban boom you got the chance to sublet. Ain't it, mamma and Izzy?" "Sure it--" "Ya, ya; I know just what's coming, but for me Newton is good enough." "What about your children, Julius? You ain't the only one in the family." "Twenty-five year I've lived in this one place since the store was only so big as this room, and on this house we didn't have a second story. A home that I did everything but build with my own hands I don't move out of so easy. Such ideas you let your children pump you with, Becky."