s, and threw out her hands
in a gesture of helplessness.

"Believe me, Izzy, maybe I am dumb. So bad my head works when your papa
worries me, but what you mean I don't know."

"Me neither, Izzy!"

"Say, there ain't much to tell. He likes Pearlie--that much he wasn't
bashful to me about. He likes Pearlie, and he wants to go in the general
store and ladies' furnishing goods business. Just clothing like his
father's store he hates. Why should he stay in a business, he says, that
is already built up? His two married brothers, he says, is enough with
his father in the one business."

"Such an ambitious boy always anxious to do for hisself. I wish, Izzy,
you had some of his ambitions. You hear, Poil, in the same business as
papa he wants to go?"

Mrs. Binswanger rocked complacently, a smile crawled across her lips,
and she nodded rhythmically to the tilting of her rocking-chair, her
eyes closed in the pleasant phantasmagoria of a dream.

Mr. Binswanger slumped lower in his chair.

"A good head for business that Max Teitlebaum has on him. Like your
mamma says, Izzy, you should have one just half so good."

"There you go again, pa, pickin', pickin'! If you'd give a fellow a
start and lend him a little capital--I'd have some ambition, too, and
start for myself."

Mr. Binswanger leaped forward full stretch, as a jetty of flame shoots
through a stream of oil.

"For yourself! On what? From where would I get it? Cut it out from my
heart? Two months already I begged you to come out by me in the store
and see if you can't help start something to get back the trade--How we
need young blood in the store to get--"

"Aw, I--"

"Five thousand dollars I give you for to lose in the ladies'
ready-to-wear. Another white elephant we need in the family yet. Not
five thousand dollars outside my insurance I got to my name, and even if
I did have it I wouldn't--"

"Julius!"

"I mean it, so help me! Even if I did have it, not a cent to a boy what
don't listen to his old father."

"For God's sakes, pa, quit your hollering; if you ain't got it to your
name I'm sorry for Pearlie."

"For me?"

"You think, pa, a boy like Max Teitlebaum, a boy that banker Finburg's
daughter is crazy after, is getting married only because you got a nice
daughter?"

"What do you mean, Izzy?"

"The woods are full of 'em just as nice. I didn't need no brick house
to fall on me to-day at lunch. He didn't come right out and say nothing,
but when he s