In the meantime the children returned from school, and, finding the door locked, climbed through the fire-escape, and entered the house through the window. Seeing nothing on the table, they rushed to the stove. Abe pulled a steaming potato out of the boiling pot, and so scalded his fingers that the potato fell to the floor; where upon the three others pounced on it.
“It was my potato,” cried Abe, blowing his burned fingers, while with the other hand and his foot he cuffed and kicked the three who were struggling on the floor. A wild fight ensued, and the potato was smashed under Abe’s foot amid shouts and screams. Hanneh Breineh, on the stairs, heard the noise of her famished brood, and topped their cries with curses and invectives.
“They are here already, the savages! They are here already to shorten my life! They heard you all over the hall, in all the houses around!”
The children, disregarding her words, pounced on her market-basket, shouting ravenously: “Mamma, I’m hungry! What more do you got to eat?”
They tore the bread and herring out of Hanneh Breineh’s basket and devoured it in starved savagery, clamoring for more.
“Murderers!” screamed Hanneh Breineh, goaded beyond endurance. “What are you tearing from me my flesh? From where should I steal to give you more? Here I had already a pot of potatoes and a whole loaf of bread and two herrings, and you swallowed it down in the wink of an eye. I have to have Rockefeller’s millions to fill your stomachs.”
All at once Hanneh Breineh became aware that Benny was missing. “Oi weh!” she burst out, wringing her hands in a new wave of woe, “where is Benny? Didn’t he come home yet from school?”
She ran out into the hall, opened the grime-coated window, and looked up and down the street; but Benny was nowhere in sight.
“Abe, Jake, Fanny, quick, find Benny!” entreated Hanneh Breineh, as she rushed back into the kitchen. But the children, anxious to snatch a few minutes’ play before the school-call, dodged past her and hurried out.
With the baby on her arm, Hanneh Breineh hastened to the kindergarten.