"I tell you, no. What Mark Lillianthal does and what my son can say so easy makes nothing with me. I'm glad as I got a home to stay in."
Above her daughter's bowed head Mrs. Binswanger regarded her husband through watery eyes. "She ain't so wrong, Simon. I tell you I got the first time to hear you come out and say to your family, 'Well, this year we do something big.' The bigger you get in business the littler on the outside you get, Simon. Always you been the last to do things."
"And, papa, everybody—"
"Everybody makes no difference with me. I don't work for the steamship company. For two thousand dollars what such a trip costs I can do better as Europe."
"I—I just wish I hadn't ever been born."
A sudden tear found its way down Mrs. Binswanger's billowy cheek. "You hear, Simon, your own daughter has to wish she had never got born."
She drew her daughter upward to her wide bosom, and through the loose basque percolated the warm tears.
"'Sh-h-h-h, Miriam, don't you cry."
"Ach, now, Carrie—"
"I tell you, Simon, I 'ain't been a wife that has made such demands on you, but I guess you think it's a comfort that a mother should hear that in society her daughter has to take a back seat."