“People, my child! Get me my child! I’ll go crazy out of my head! Get me my child, or I’ll take poison before your eyes!”
“Still yourself a little!” pleaded Mrs. Pelz.
“Talk not to me!” cried Hanneh Breineh, wringing her hands. “You’re having all your children. I lost mine. Every good luck comes to other people. But I didn’t live yet to see a good day in my life. Mine only joy, mine Benny, is lost away from me.”
The crowd followed Hanneh Breineh as she wailed through the streets, leaning on Mrs. Pelz. By the time she returned to her house the children were back from school; but seeing that Benny was not there, she chased them out in the street, crying:
“Out of here, you robbers, gluttons! Go find Benny!” Hanneh Breineh crumpled into a chair in utter prostration. “Oi weh! he’s lost! Mine life; my little bird; mine only joy! How many nights I spent nursing him when he had the measles! And all that I suffered for weeks and months when he had the whooping-cough! How the eyes went out of my head till I learned him how to walk, till I learned him how to talk! And such a smart child! If I lost all the others, it wouldn’t tear me so by the heart.”
She worked herself up into such a hysteria, crying, and tearing her hair, and hitting her head with her knuckles, that at last she fell into a faint. It took some time before Mrs. Pelz, with the aid of neighbors, revived her.
“Benny, mine angel!” she moaned as she opened her eyes.
Just then a policeman came in with the lost Benny.
“Na, na, here you got him already!” said Mrs. Pelz. “Why did you carry on so for nothing? Why did you tear up the world like a crazy?”
The child’s face was streaked with tears as he cowered, frightened and forlorn. Hanneh Breineh sprang toward him, slapping his cheeks, boxing his ears, before the neighbors could rescue him from her.