"What should I do with them before the apartment is in order? Apartments have to be freshly painted and papered." Then with the graceful gesture which only the ability to pay bestows upon a person, she added: "I was especially careful in selecting the wall-paper to get artistic patterns." Lilly had a sickish feeling. It was like being in doubt as to whether or not your schoolmates were teasing you. Added to all the other annoyances nothing had been gotten for dinner. Lilly set the coffee on to boil and put the afternoon rolls on the table. Well, then, they would simply skip a meal again. The two Czepaneks had grown nimble in that sort of skipping. The mother hastily gulped down the hot drink. No time must be lost, she said, they would have to get at the packing. At this point she was seized by another attack of fury. "Hadn't you held my hands, you good-for-nothing, you," she screamed, "we should have had that lovely furniture in its place by to-morrow morning. As it is, we shall have to move in with all this trash. What _will_ the people say when they see it?" She tore at her artificial curls and despairingly brandished the bread-knife, with which she was slicing her roll. Then she turned up the sleeves of her blouse, and said the packing should begin. She emptied the wardrobe and piled the clothes over the bottom of the bed. The underwear and linen, the contents of their linen chest, she sent flying over the floor. The sinews of her withered arms jerked, the sweat trickled down her forehead. Lilly, watching the aimless pother with an oppressed feeling at her heart, noticed the score of the Song of Songs, the home's greatest treasure, lying on the floor, heedlessly thrown there by her mother along with nightgowns and bed-clothes. She stooped to pick it up. "What are you after with the Song of Songs?" screamed the mother. She had been kneeling, and now jumped to her feet. "Nothing," said Lilly in surprise. "I was just going to put it on the table." "You lie," the mother screeched, "you low-down thing. You want to steal it, the way you stole the receipt. I'll spoil your little game for you." Lilly suddenly saw a gleaming something pass before her eyes, and felt a pain at her throat, felt something warm spread soothingly down to her left breast. Not until her mother prepared for a second thrust did Lilly realise it was the bread-knife she was holding in her hand. She uttered a piercing scream, and grasped her mother's wrist. But the mother had developed giant strength, and Lilly would probably have succumbed in the struggle that ensued, had not the noise they made drawn the neighbours to the spot. Mrs. Czepanek was caught from behind, and bound with handkerchiefs. She held the bread-knife in a tight clutch, which the strongest man could not relax, and did not drop it until an opiate had been administered by the physician who had hurried to the scene.