“Gott! Ain’t David answering?” my heart cries out. “Why don’t he throw him out of the house?”

“Perhaps I can’t hear him,” I think, and with my finger-nails I pick thinner the broken plaster.

I push myself back to get away and not to do it. But it did itself with my hands. “Don’t let me hear nothing,” I pray, and yet I strain more to hear.

The uncle was still hollering. And David wasn’t saying nothing for me.

“Gazlen! You want to sink your life in a family of beggars?”

“But I love her. We’re so happy together. Don’t that count for something? I can’t live without her.”

“Koosh! Love her! Do you want to plan your future with your heart or with your head? Take for your wife an ignorant shopgirl without a cent! Can two dead people start up a dance together?”

“So you mean not to help me with the office?”

“Yah-yah-yah! I’ll run on all fours to do it! The impudence from such penniless nobodies wanting to pull in a young man with a future for a doctor! Nobody but such a yok like you would be such an easy mark.”

“Well, I got to live my own life, and I love her.”