“Just a minute, madam. I’ll call a boy to take up your basket for you.”
Hanneh Breineh, glaring at him, jerked the basket savagely from his hands. “Mind your own business!” she retorted. “I’ll take it up myself. Do you think you’re a Russian policeman to boss me in my own house?”
Angry lines appeared on the countenance of the representative of social decorum.
“It is against the rules, madam,” he said, stiffly.
“You should sink into the earth with all your rules and brass buttons. Ain’t this America? Ain’t this a free country? Can’t I take up in my own house what I buy with my own money?” cried Hanneh Breineh, reveling in the opportunity to shower forth the volley of invectives that had been suppressed in her for the weeks of deadly dignity of Riverside Drive.
In the midst of this uproar Fanny came in with Mrs. Van Suyden. Hanneh Breineh rushed over to her, crying:
“This bossy policeman won’t let me take up my basket in the elevator.”
The daughter, unnerved with shame and confusion, took the basket in her white-gloved hand and ordered the hall-boy to take it around to the regular delivery entrance.
Hanneh Breineh was so hurt by her daughter’s apparent defense of the hall-man’s rules that she utterly ignored Mrs. Van Suyden’s greeting and walked up the seven flights of stairs out of sheer spite.
“You see the tragedy of my life?” broke out Fanny, turning to Mrs. Van Suyden.