QUAQUARO So you ain't goin' back to Hamburg no more? JOHN Naw. It's a good sayin': Stay at home an' make an honest livin'! I'm not goin' outa town no more. Not a bit of it! First of all, it's no sort o' life, goin' from one lodgin' to another. An' then--a man don' get no younger neither! The girls, they ain't so hot after you no more ... No, it's a good thing that all this wanderin' about is goin' to end. QUAQUARO Your wife--she's a fine schemer. JOHN [_Merrily._] Well, this is a brand new household what's jus' had a child born into it. I said to the boss: I'm a newly married man! Then he axed me if my first wife was dead. On the contrary an' not a bit of it, I says. She's alive an' kickin', so that she's jus' given birth to a kickin' young citizen o' Berlin, that's what! When I was travellin' along from Hamburg this mornin' by all the old stations--Hamburg, Stendal, Ultzen--an' got outa the fourth-class coach at the Lehrter station with all my duds, the devil take me if I didn't thank God with a sigh. I guess he didn't hear on account o' the noise o' the trains. QUAQUARO Did you hear, Paul, that Mrs. Knobbe's youngest over the way has been taken off again? JOHN No. What chance did I have to hear that? But if it's dead, it's a good thing, Emil. When I saw the poor crittur a week ago when it had convulsions an' Selma brought it in an' me an' mother gave it a spoonful o' sugar an' water--well, it was pretty near ready for heaven then. QUAQUARO An' you mean to tell me that you didn't hear nothin' o' the circumstances, about the how an' the why o' that child's death? JOHN Naw! [_He fetches a long tobacco pipe from behind the sofa._] Wait a minute! I'll light a pipe first! I didn't have no chanct to hear nothin'. QUAQUARO Well, I'm surprised that your wife didn't write you nothin' at all. JOHN Aw, since we has a child o' our own, mother's taken no interest in them Knobbe brats no more. QUAQUARO [_Observing JOHN with lurking curiosity._] You're wife was reel crazy to have a son, wasn't she? JOHN Well, that's natural. D'you think I wasn't? What's a man to work for? What do I slave away for? It's different thing savin' a good lump o' money for your own son from doin' it for your sister's children. QUAQUARO So you don't know that a strange girl came here an' swore that the Knobbe woman's child wasn't hers but belonged to the girl? JOHN Is that so? Well, Mrs. Knobbe an' child stealin'--them two things don't go together. Now if it'd been mother, that would ha' been more likely. But not that Knobbe woman! But tell me, Emil, what's all this here business about? QUAQUARO Well, one person says one thing an' another says another. The Knobbe woman says that certain people has started a plot with detectives an' such like to get hold o' the brat. An' there ain't no doubt o' this. It's proved that the child was hers. C'n you maybe give me a tip as to where your brother-in-law's been keepin' hisself the past few days? JOHN