DINA. Now, see here, Nunky, let's suppose--here you are right here minding your own business and quite indifferent to what other people are doing all around you. Very well! I come into the room and right here on this table, under your very nose, and with a long face like an undertaker's, or, rather, with the long face of that jailbird you are defending, I set down--well, what?--anything--a pair of dirty old shoes! LAUDISI. I don't see the connection. DINA. Wait, don't interrupt me! I said a pair of old shoes. Well, no, not a pair of old shoes--a flat iron, a rolling pin, or your shaving brush for instance--and I walk out again without saying a word to anybody! Now I leave it to you, wouldn't you feel justified in wondering just a little, little, bit as to what in the world I meant by it? LAUDISI. Oh, you're irresistible, Dina! And you're clever, aren't you? But you're talking with old Nunky, remember! You see, you have been putting all sorts of crazy things on the table here; and you did it with the idea of making me ask what it's all about; and, of course, since you were doing all that on purpose, you can't blame me if I do ask, why those old shoes just there, on that table, dearie? But what's all that got to do with it? You'll have to show me now that this Mr. Ponza of ours, that jailbird as you say, or that rascal, that boor, as your father calls him, brought his mother-in-law to the apartment next to ours with the idea of stringing us all! You've got to show me that he did it on purpose! DINA. I don't say that he did it on purpose--not at all! But you can't deny that this famous Mr. Ponza has come to this town and done a number of things which are unusual, to say the least; and which he must have known were likely to arouse a very natural curiosity in everybody. Look Nunky, here is a man: he comes to town to fill an important public position, and--what does he do? Where does he go to live? He hires an apartment on the _top_ floor, if you please, of that dirty old tenement out there on the very outskirts of the town. Now, I ask you--did you ever see the place? Inside? LAUDISI. I suppose you went and had a look at it? DINA. Yes, Nunky dear, I went--with mamma! And we weren't the only ones, you know. The whole town has been to have a look at it. It's a five story tenement with an interior court so dark at noontime you can hardly see your hand before your face. Well, there is an iron balcony built out from the fifth story around the courtyard. A basket is hanging from the railing ... They let it up and down--on a rope! LAUDISI. Well, what of it? DINA (_looking at him with astonished indignation_). What of it? Well, there, if you please, is where he keeps his wife!