VII
He ran to Chashke.
He was terribly pale, and Chashke and her mother were frightened when he entered.
“What is the matter?” cried Chashke.
He threw himself upon the wooden lounge, lowered his head and was silent. Both women stared at him.
“Is your tongue paralysed?” asked the old woman, finally breaking the silence.
“What’s happened over at your place? Speak, man,” entreated Chashke.
“What should happen?” he asked angrily. “It happened! My wife is no better than the rest! She’d like to run everything. Everything!”
He recounted all that had taken place in his home.
“His wife is a wise woman, upon my word,” offered the old woman after hearing the story.
But Drabkin was anxious to know what Chashke thought.
“Well, what do you think of the reckoning?” he asked, eyeing her intently.
“I never studied mathematics——”
He made a gesture of impatience, and she added,—“but I believe that the figures are correct.”
“And suppose they are correct,—then what?”
He was growing angry.
“What do I know?” replied Chashke, coldly. “If they are correct, then from the looks of things, matters can’t be otherwise.”
“What do you mean,—‘can’t be otherwise?’ Am I, then, to do just like all the other bosses?”
“Who’s telling you to become a boss?”
He looked at her in astonishment.
“Well, what are you staring at? Keep on working as you’ve done up to now. Don’t take it into your head to run a factory....”
“There’s talk for you!”
“Certainly!”
Seething with fury, he left Chashke.
Such ideas she could take into her head!