After a year of peregrination and petitioning he came, a bundle of nerves, to Jitomir to make a last attempt in the province of Volyn.
A high judiciary officer who received him rather politely, made, in the course of their interview, the semi-jocular remark that the way to the bar lay through the baptismal font.
"Villain!" Lurie thundered, his fists clenched and his eyes flashing.
Luckily the functionary was a cool-headed old man who knew how to avoid unsavory publicity. And so, when Lurie defiantly started to stalk out of the room, he was not stopped.
A month or two later, Boris and Tanya arrived in New York.
II
It was near seven o'clock when Boris came from the pearl-button factory where he earned, at piece-work, from six to seven dollars a week. As Tanya heard his footsteps through the door she sprang to her feet and, with a joyous gleam in her eye, she ran out to meet him at the head of the stairs. In her delight she at once forgot the Maupassant article.
After an affectionate greeting she said, with burlesque supplication:—
"Don't get angry, Borya, but I am afraid I have flunked on my soup again."