the wife's voice made itself heard, and the house was filled
with scolding and railing.

"May God help me, but I think you are mad or possessed, the whole pack
of you!" she shrieked. "If you want to stay in here you'll have to be
quiet, both of you! Humph! it isn't enough that one is to keep open
house and food for vermin, but one is to have sparring and rowing and
the devil's own to-do in the sitting-room as well. But I won't have any
more of it, not if I know it. Sh--h! Hold your tongues, you brats
there, and wipe your noses, too; if you don't, I'll come and do it. I
never saw the like of such people. Here they walk in out of the street,
without even a penny to buy flea-powder, and begin to kick up rows in
the middle of the night and quarrel with the people who own the house,
I don't mean to have any more of it, do you understand that? and you
can go your way, every one who doesn't belong home here. I am going to
have peace in my own quarters, I am."

I said nothing, I never opened my mouth once. I sat down again next the
door and listened to the noise. They all screamed together, even the
children, and the girl who wanted to explain how the whole disturbance
commenced. If I only kept quiet it would all blow over sometime; it
would surely not come to the worst if I only did not utter a word; and
what word after all could I have to say? Was it not perhaps winter
outside, and far advanced into the night, besides? Was that a time to
strike a blow, and show one could hold one's own? No folly now!... So I
sat still and made no attempt to leave the house; I never even blushed
at keeping silent, never felt ashamed, although I had almost been shown
the door. I stared coolly, case-hardened, at the wall where Christ hung
in an oleograph, and held my tongue obstinately during all the
landlady's attack.

"Well, if it is me you want to get quit of, ma'am, there will be
nothing in the way as far as I am concerned," said one of the
card-players as he stood up. The other card-players rose as well.

"No, I didn't mean you--nor you either," replied the landlady to them.
"If there's any need to, I will show well enough who I mean, if there's
the least need to, if I know myself rightly. Oh, it will be shown quick
enough who it is...."

She talked with pauses, gave me these thrusts at short intervals, and
spun it out to make it clearer and clearer that it was me she meant.
"Quiet," said I to myself; "only keep quiet!" She had not ask