wonder it ain't, the way you are sticking it into other
people's business. If you think I care what you think about what my boy
eats for his lunch you are making a big mistake. I could take care of my
own boy, Potash, and I am just as much obliged if you would do the
same."

Abe flushed a fiery red and rose to his feet.

"I guess I would go into the next car," he said.

"You could go a whole lot farther for all I care!" Max retorted, and
immediately buried his head between the open pages of a conservative
evening paper.

Abe had not offended in vain, however, for after dinner that night, when
Sidney sought his father in the Koblins' suite at Riesenberger's
cottage, the King was in an ugly mood.

"Say, Pop," Sidney began, "how about you for twenty till Saturday
night?"

"What d'ye mean?" Max bellowed. "Ain't I given you ten dollars only this
morning?"

Sidney laughed uncomfortably. "Ain't you the old tightwad!" he said.

Max's reply to this observation was quite unprecedented in all Sidney's
experience. It took the form of an open-handed blow on the cheek, the
first ever administered by his indulgent parent since Sidney's
infancy. Forthwith began a family row that brought the entire
household--guests, servants and proprietress--on the run to the Koblin
apartments. When Mrs. Koblin's frightened screams had ceased, and Max
Koblin had calmed down sufficiently to offer an evasive explanation, the
guests trooped back to the piazza, and three games of auction pinocle,
which had started in the dining-room after the tables had been cleared,
came to an abrupt close. Instead, the players foregathered with the
other guests in the porch rockers.

There they discussed the incident until nearly midnight; and, as no one
had been an eyewitness of the affray, there were as many versions of it
as may be mathematically demonstrated where one blow is struck among
three persons. Some had it that Sidney had attacked his father and
others that Mrs. Koblin had assaulted Sidney, but a large feminine
majority favoured a construction of the matter as one of wife-beating.
Abe alone correctly surmised the turn that Sidney's affairs had taken
and he sat on the piazza in conscience-stricken solitude long after all
the other guests had retired.

He blamed himself for the entire affair and he smoked cigar after cigar
before he sought his bed. As he walked up the broad staircase he met Max
Koblin at the first landing.

"Max," he said, "wh