to
her neighbor.

Hanneh Breineh sipped the gravy drop by drop, like a connoisseur sipping
wine.

"Ah-h-h! a taste of that gravy lifts me up to heaven!" As she disposed
leisurely of the slice of onion and carrot she relaxed and expanded and
even grew jovial. "Let us wish all our troubles on the Russian Czar! Let
him bust with our worries for rent! Let him get shriveled with our
hunger for bread! Let his eyes dry out of his head looking for work!"

"Pshaw! I'm forgetting from everything," she exclaimed, jumping up. "It
must be eleven or soon twelve, and my children will be right away out of
school and fall on me like a pack of wild wolves. I better quick run to
the market and see what cheaper I can get for a quarter."

Because of the lateness of her coming, the stale bread at the nearest
bake-shop was sold out, and Hanneh Breineh had to trudge from shop to
shop in search of the usual bargain, and spent nearly an hour to save
two cents.

In the meantime the children returned from school, and, finding the door
locked, climbed through the fire-escape, and entered the house through
the window. Seeing nothing on the table, they rushed to the stove. Abe
pulled a steaming potato out of the boiling pot, and so scalded his
fingers that the potato fell to the floor; whereupon the three others
pounced on it.

"It was my potato," cried Abe, blowing his burned fingers, while with
the other hand and his foot he cuffed and kicked the three who were
struggling on the floor. A wild fight ensued, and the potato was smashed
under Abe's foot amid shouts and screams. Hanneh Breineh, on the stairs,
heard the noise of her famished brood, and topped their cries with
curses and invectives.

"They are here already, the savages! They are here already to shorten my
life! They heard you all over the hall, in all the houses around!"

The children, disregarding her words, pounced on her market-basket,
shouting ravenously: "Mama, I'm hungry! What more do you got to eat?"

They tore the bread and herring out of Hanneh Breineh's basket and
devoured it in starved savagery, clamoring for more.

"Murderers!" screamed Hanneh Breineh, goaded beyond endurance. "What are
you tearing from me my flesh? From where should I steal to give you
more? Here I had already a pot of potatoes and a whole loaf of bread and
two herrings, and you swallowed it down in the wink of an eye. I have to
have Rockefeller's millions to fill your stomachs."

All at once Ha