d-for-nothing, you! With your hair combed up straight on your
head like a girl's, and a pleated shirt like I'd be ashamed to carry in
stock, you got no put-in! If I give you five thousand dollars for a
business for yourself you don't care so much what kind of manners I got.
Five thousand dollars he asks me for to go in business when he ain't got
it in him to keep a job for six months."

"The last job wasn't--"

"Right now in this highway-robbery hotel you got me into, I got to pay
your board for you--if you want five thousand dollars from me you got to
get rid of me some way, for my insurance policy is all I can say. And
sometimes I wish you would--easier for me it would be."

"Julius!"

His son crumpled his napkin and tossed it toward the center of the
table. His soft, moist lips were twisted in anger, and his voice, under
cover of a whisper, trembled with that same anger.

"For what little board you've paid for me I can't hear about it no more.
I'll go out and--"

"'Sh-h-h, Izzy--'sh-h-h, papa, all over the dining-room they can hear
you, 'sh-h-h!"

"Home I ain't never denied my children--open doors they get always in my
house but in a highway-robbery hotel, where I can't afford--"

"We got the cheapest family rates here. Such rates we get here,
children, and highway robbery your father calls it!"

"Five months we been in the city, and three months already a empty house
standing out there waiting, and nothing from it coming in. A house I
love like my life, a house what me and your mamma wish we was back in
every minute of the day!"

"I only said, Julius, for myself I like my little home best, but--"

"I ain't got the strength for the street-car ride no more. I ain't got
appetite for this sloppy American food no more. I can't breathe no more
in that coop up-stairs. Right now you should know how my feet hurt for
slippers; a collar I got to wear to supper when like a knife it cuts me.
I can't afford this. I got such troubles with business I only wish for
one day you should have 'em. I want my little house, my porch, my vines,
and my chickens. I want my comforts. My son ain't my boss."

Isadore pushed back from the table, his jaw low and sullen.

"I ain't going to sit through a meal and be abused like--like I was a--"

"You ain't got to sit; stand up, then."

"Izzy--for God's sakes, Izzy, the people! Julius, so help me if I come
down to a meal with you again. Look, Julius, for God's sake--the
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