"See, children, you say he can't never refuse me nothing; listen how he won't let me get in a word crossways before he snaps me off. If we sublet, Julius, we--" "Sublet we don't neither! I should ride forty-five minutes into the city after my hard day's work, when away from the city forty-five minutes every one else is riding. My house is my house, my yard is my yard. I don't got no ideas like my high-toned son and daughter for a hotel where to stretch your feet you got to pay for the space." "Listen to your papa, children, even before I got my mouth open good how he talks back to a wife that nursed him through ten years of bronchitis. All he thinks I'm good enough for is to make poultices and rub on his chest goose grease." "_Ach_, Becky, don't fuss so with your old man. Look, even the cat you got scared. Here, Billy--here, kitty, kitty." "Ain't I asked you often enough, Julius, not to feed on the carpet a piece of meat to the cat? 'Sh-h-h-h, Billy, scat! All that I'm good enough for is to clean up. How he talks to his wife yet!" Miss Binswanger caught her breath on the crest of a sob and pushed her untouched plate toward the center of the table; tears swam on a heavy film across her eyes and thickened her gaze and voice. "This--ain't--no--hole for--for a girl to live in." "All I wish is you should never live in a worse." "I ain't got nothin' here, papa, but sit and sit and sit on the porch every night with you and mamma. When Izzy comes out once a week to take me to a show, how he fusses and fusses you hear for yourselves. For a girl nearly--twenty--it ain't no joke." "It ain't, papa; it ain't no joke for me to have to take her in and out every week, lemme tell you." "Eat your supper, Poil; not eating don't get you nowheres with your papa." "I--I don't want nothin'." A tear wiggle--waggled down Miss Binswanger's smooth cheek, and she fumbled at her waist-line for her handkerchief. "I--I--I just wish sometimes I--was dead." Mr. Binswanger shot his bald head outward suddenly, as a turtle darts forward from its case, and rapped the table noisily with his fist clutched around an upright fork, and his voice climbing to a falsetto. "I--I wish in my life I had never heard the name of the city." "Now, Julius, don't begin." "Ruination it has brought me. My boy won't stay by me in the store so he can't gallivant in the city; my goil won't talk to me no more for madness because we ain't in the city; my wife eats out of me my heart because we ain't in the city. For supper every night when I come home tired from the store all I get served to me is the city. I can't swallow no more! Money you all think I got what grows on trees, just because I give all what I got. You should know how tight--how tight I got to squeeze for it." Mrs. Binswanger threw her arms apart in a wide gesture of helplessness. "See, children, just as soon as I say a word, mad like a wet hen he gets and right away puts on a poor mouth."