He swore.
“Not even if your father came to you from the other world—if he came to you in a dream, I mean—and told you to drop me?”
Again he swore.
“And you really don’t care for Fanny?”
And again he swore.
“Nor for Beckie?”
The ordeal was too much, and he begged her to desist. But she wouldn’t, and so, chafing under inexorable cross-examinations, he had to swear again and again that he had never cared for any of Joe’s female pupils or assistants except Mamie.
At last she relented.
“Look, piece of loafer you!” she then said, holding out an open bank book to his eyes. “But what is the use? It is not light enough, and you can not read, anyvay. You can eat, dot’s all. Vell, you could make out figures, couldn’t you? There are three hundred and forty dollars,” she proceeded, pointing to the balance line, which represented the savings, for a marriage portion, of five years’ hard toil. “It should be three hundred and sixty-five, but then for the twenty-five dollars you owe me I may as well light a mourner’s candle, ain’ it?”
When she had started to produce the bank book from her bosom he had surmised her intent, and while she was gone he was making guesses as to the magnitude of the sum to her credit. His most liberal estimate, however, had been a hundred and fifty dollars; so that the revelation of the actual figure completely overwhelmed him. He listened to her with a broad grin, and when she paused he burst out: