Joey had tripped up to the lounge where he now stood watching his father with a stare in which there was more curiosity than fright. The little woman lowered her crest. "Not at all! God be with you!" she said quickly, in a tone of abject cowardice, and involuntarily shrinking before the ferocious attitude of Jake's strapping figure. "Who? What? When? I did not mean anything at all, _sure_. Gitl _never_ said a word to me. A prohibition if she did. Come, Mr. Podkovnik, why should you get _ektzited_?" she pursued, beginning to recover her presence of mind. "By-the-bye--I came near forgetting--how about the boarder you promised to get me; do you remember, Mr. Podkovnik?" "Talk away a toothache for your grandma, not for me. Who told her about _danshin'_ girls?" he thundered again, re-enforcing the ejaculation with an English oath, and bringing down a violent fist on the table as he did so. At this Gitl's sobs made themselves heard from the bedroom. They lashed Jake into a still greater fury. "What is she whimpering about, the piece of stench! _Alla right_, I do hate her; I can not bear the sight of her; and let her do what she likes. _I don' care!_" "Mr. Podkovnik! To think of a _sma't_ man like you talking in this way!" "Dot'sh alla right!" he said, somewhat relenting. "I don't _care_ for any _danshin'_ girls. It is a ---- ---- lie! It was that scabby _greenhorn_ who must have taken it into her head. I don't _care_ for anybody; not for her certainly"--pointing to the bedroom. "I am an _American feller_, a _Yankee_--that's what I am. What punishment is due to me, then, if I can not stand a _shnooza_ like her? It is _nu ushed_; I can not live with her, even if she stand one foot on heaven and one on earth. Let her take everything"--with a wave at the household effects--"and I shall pay her as much _cash_ as she asks--I am willing to break stones to pay her--provided she agrees to a divorce." The word had no sooner left his lips than Gitl burst out of the darkness of her retreat, her bangs dishevelled, her face stained and flushed with weeping and rage, and her eyes, still suffused with tears, flashing fire. "May you and your Polish harlot be jumping out of your skins and chafing with wounds as long as you will have to wait for a divorce!" she exploded. "He thinks I don't know how they stand together near her house making love to each other!" Her unprecedented show of pugnacity took him aback. "Look at the Cossack of straw!" he said quietly, with a forced smile. "Such a piece of cholera!" he added, as if speaking to himself, as he resumed his seat. "I wonder who tells her all these fibs?" Gitl broke into a fresh flood of tears. "_Vell_, what do you want now?" Mrs. Kavarsky said, addressing herself to her. "He says it is a lie. I told you you take all sorts of silly notions into your head." "_Ach_, would it were a lie!" Gitl answered between her sobs.