Meanwhile Mamie lay brooding in her cot-bed in the parlour, which she shared with her landlady’s two daughters. She was in the most wretched frame of mind, ineffectually struggling to fall asleep. She had made her way down the stairs leading from the Podkovniks with a violently palpitating heart. She had been bound for no more imposing a place than Joe’s academy, and before repairing thither she had had to betake herself home to change her stately toilet for a humbler attire. For, as a matter of fact, it was expressly for her visit to the Podkovniks that she had thus pranked herself out, and that would have been much too gorgeous an appearance to make at Joe’s establishment on one of its regular dancing evenings. Having changed her toilet she did call at Joe’s; but so full was her mind of Jake and his wife and, accordingly, she was so irritable, that in the middle of a quadrille she picked a quarrel with the dancing master, and abruptly left the hall.
The next day Jake’s work fared badly. When it was at last over he did not go direct home as usual, but first repaired to Mamie’s. He found her with her landlady in the kitchen. She looked careworn and was in a white blouse which lent her face a convalescent, touching effect.
“Good-eveni’g, Mrs. Bunetzky! Good-eveni’g, Mamie!” he fairly roared, as he playfully fillipped his hat backward. And after addressing a pleasantry or two to the mistress of the house, he boldly proposed to her boarder to go out with him for a talk. For a moment Mamie hesitated, fearing lest her landlady had become aware of the existence of a Mrs. Podkovnik; but instantly flinging all considerations to the wind, she followed him out into the street.
“You’sh afraid I vouldn’t pay you, Mamie?” he began, with bravado, in spite of his intention to start on a different line, he knew not exactly which.
Mamie was no less disappointed by the opening of the conversation than he. “I ain’t afraid a bit,” she answered, sullenly.
“Do you think my kshpenshesh are larger now?” he resumed in Yiddish. “May I lose as much through sickness. On the countrary, I shpend even much less than I used to. We have two nice boarders—I keep them only for company’s sake—and I have a shteada job—a puddin’ of a job. I shall have still more money to shpend outshite,” he added, falteringly.
“Outside?”—and she burst into an artificial laugh which sent the blood to Jake’s face.
“Why, do you think I sha’n’t go to Joe’s, nor to the theatre, nor anywhere any more? Still oftener than before! Hoy much vill you bet?”
“Rats! A married man, a papa go to a dancing school! Not unless your wife drags along with you and never lets go of your skirts,” she said sneeringly, adding the declaration that Jake’s “bluffs” gave her a “regula’ pain in de neck.”