"It was my potato," cried Abe, blowing his burned fingers, while with the other hand and his foot he cuffed and kicked the three who were struggling on the floor. A wild fight ensued, and the potato was smashed under Abe's foot amid shouts and screams. Hanneh Breineh, on the stairs, heard the noise of her famished brood, and topped their cries with curses and invectives. "They are here already, the savages! They are here already to shorten my life! They heard you all over the hall, in all the houses around!" The children, disregarding her words, pounced on her market-basket, shouting ravenously: "Mama, I'm hungry! What more do you got to eat?" They tore the bread and herring out of Hanneh Breineh's basket and devoured it in starved savagery, clamoring for more. "Murderers!" screamed Hanneh Breineh, goaded beyond endurance. "What are you tearing from me my flesh? From where should I steal to give you more? Here I had already a pot of potatoes and a whole loaf of bread and two herrings, and you swallowed it down in the wink of an eye. I have to have Rockefeller's millions to fill your stomachs." All at once Hanneh Breineh became aware that Benny was missing. "_Oi weh!_" she burst out, wringing her hands in a new wave of woe, "where is Benny? Didn't he come home yet from school?" She ran out into the hall, opened the grime-coated window, and looked up and down the street; but Benny was nowhere in sight. "Abe, Jake, Fanny, quick, find Benny!" entreated Hanneh Breineh as she rushed back into the kitchen. But the children, anxious to snatch a few minutes' play before the school-call, dodged past her and hurried out. With the baby on her arm, Hanneh Breineh hastened to the kindergarten. "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 push-cart, 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!_" Mrs. Pelz took the frightened baby out of the mother's arms. "Still yourself a little! See how you're frightening your child."