But why did they want money so much? “Why do you want money so much, Etta?” “Well, my Gawd, who don’t? This ain’t living, the way we go on now. Maybe once a week you take me to the movies. Oh, I ain’t complaining, Manny. Only it’s pretty hard. All the other girls at the office have good times. They go to Coney Island, Broadway, they go to cabarets, dances. I’m as good-looking as they are. I got nice clothes. You’re all right, Manny, but gee, it’s long, waiting like this.” “Oh....” “You ain’t sore at me, are you, because I told you? It’ll be all right, Manny! You’ll make good. I’ll speak to my father. He’ll come across.” “Oh....” He didn’t go near her for the next three or four days. * * * * * There were two letters on the dining-room table. One had come in a large, oblong manila envelope, the other in a cheap pink one. Emmanuel had just come home from college. He picked up the letters. He saw that his mother had opened them. Now, as he came into the room, her diseased eyes narrowed: “That’s why we go hungry an education to give you? That’s why?” He coloured. Angrily. “You shouldn’t have opened them. You had no business to.” “What? My own children’s letters I shouldn’t open, maybe?” Anyway, she couldn’t have read them. She couldn’t read English. One of the things was a returned manuscript, the other a letter from Etta.... Still, his mother must have guessed, because now she turned on him: “Goils! To spend money on. And this craziness, this story business.” Pale, he threw at her: “I’ve got to write if I want to be a writer!” Her face hardened. She shook her bony, needle-scarred finger in his face: “A writer he wants to be, with the family starving.” She wiped her nose, her eyes. “A doctor he don’t want to be, what’s a profession. A writer, even if maybe we die and your sister Reba got to break her arms pushing that machine.” Out in the kitchen he read Etta’s letter. She had spoken to her parents, she wrote--Emmanuel had left that to her because he didn’t have the courage, he didn’t care enough--and her father had expressed willingness to furnish an office for him after the marriage. “Gee, I’m just tickled silly, are you glad, honey?” was her question in the even, characterless business-college handwriting. “I just couldn’t wait until I see you, so I had to write.” “So that’s it,” he thought. His mouth moved: “Glad....” His mother was standing next to him again. “Goils! I’m going blind with embroidery and your father any minute is gonna kill himself with that rheumatism yet. All our lifes, all our lifes for you we worked.” Oh, yes, all their lives. Putting pennies into him, putting food into him, waiting, waiting.... “It’s all right, Ma, I....” “My eyes feel like they was on fire....” “It’s all right, Ma. Listen!” He read her the letter. “You see, Etta’s father is going to furnish an office for me. You see....”