But you may as well know that when it is dusk outside in the street, the Breklins are already "way on" in the night, because they live in a basement, separated from the rest of the world by an air-shaft, and when the sun gathers his beams round him before setting, the first to be summoned are those down the Breklins' shaft, because of the time required for them to struggle out again. The same thing in the morning, only reversed. People don't usually get up, if they can help it, before it is really light, and so it comes to pass that when other people have left their beds, and are going about their business, the Breklins are still asleep and making the long, long night longer yet. If you ask me, "How is it they don't wear their sides out with lying in bed?" I shall reply: They _do_ rise with aching sides, and if you say, "How can people be so lazy?" I can tell you, They don't do it out of laziness, and they lie awake a great part of the time. What's the good of lying in bed if one isn't asleep? There you have it in a nutshell--it's a question of the economic conditions. The Breklins are very poor, their life is a never-ending struggle with poverty, and they have come to the conclusion that the cheapest way of waging it, and especially in winter, is to lie in bed under a great heap of old clothes and rags of every description. Breklin is a house-painter, and from Christmas to Purim (I beg to distinguish!) work is dreadfully slack. When you're not earning a crooked penny, what are you to do? In the first place, you must live on "cash," that is, on the few dollars scraped together and put by during the "season," and in the second place, you must cut down your domestic expenses, otherwise the money won't hold out, and then you might as well keep your teeth in a drawer. But you may neither eat nor drink, nor live at all to mention--if it's winter, the money goes all the same: it's bitterly cold, and you can't do without the stove, and the nights are long, and you want a lamp. And the Breklins saw that their money would _not_ hold out till Purim--that their Fast of Esther would be too long. Coal was beyond them, and kerosene as dear as wine, and yet how could they possibly spend less? How could they do without a fire when it was so cold? Without a lamp when it was so dark? And the Breklins had an "idea"! Why sit up at night and watch the stove and the lamp burning away their money, when they might get into bed, bury themselves in rags, and defy both poverty and cold? There is nothing in particular to do, anyhow. What should there be, a long winter evening through? Nothing! They only sat and poured out the bitterness in their heart one upon the other, quarrelled, and scolded. They could do that in bed just as well, and save firing and light into the bargain.