“Woe on your head!” cried the mother. “Where did you lost yourself? Ain’t I got enough worries on my head than to go around looking for you? I didn’t have yet a minute’s peace from that child since he was born!”
“See a crazy mother!” remonstrated Mrs. Pelz, rescuing Benny from another beating. “Such a mouth! With one breath she blesses him when he is lost, and with the other breath she curses him when he is found.”
Hanneh Breineh took from the window-sill a piece of herring covered with swarming flies, and putting it on a slice of dry bread, she filled a cup of tea that had been stewing all day, and dragged Benny over to the table to eat.
But the child, choking with tears, was unable to touch the food.
“Go eat!” commanded Hanneh Breineh. “Eat and choke yourself eating!”
“Maybe she won’t remember me no more. Maybe the servant won’t let me in,” thought Mrs. Pelz, as she walked by the brownstone house on Eighty-Fourth Street where she had been told Hanneh Breineh now lived. At last she summoned up enough courage to climb the steps. She was all out of breath as she rang the bell with trembling fingers. “Oi weh! even the outside smells riches and plenty! Such curtains! And shades on all windows like by millionaires! Twenty years ago she used to eat from the pot to the hand, and now she lives in such a palace.”
A whiff of steam-heated warmth swept over Mrs. Pelz as the door opened, and she saw her old friend of the tenements dressed in silk and diamonds like a being from another world.
“Mrs. Pelz, is it you!” cried Hanneh Breineh, overjoyed at the sight of her former neighbor. “Come right in. Since when are you back in New York?”
“We came last week,” mumbled Mrs. Pelz, as she was led into a richly carpeted reception-room.