"Right here you stay with me, Simon Binswanger! We don't get separated no more as we can help. I ain't—Ach, look such a crowd, and no Miriam. I—"
"Na, na, Carrie!"
"So easy-going he is! My daughter should keep me worried like this! To lunch the day what she sails to Europe she has to go! Always she complains that salesmen ain't good enough for her yet, and on the day she sails she has to go to lunch with one. Why, I ask you, Simon, why don't that Ray come back?"
Mr. Binswanger packed his pipe tight and adjusted a small, close-fitting black cap. "To travel with women, I tell you, it ain't no pleasure."
"Ach, du Himmel! Right away off that cap comes, Simon! With my own hands right away out of sight I hide it. Just once I want Miriam should see you in that skull-hat! Right away off you take it, Simon!"
"Ach, Carrie, on my own head I—"
"I tell you already ten times I wish I was back in my flat. I guess you think it's a good feeling I got to lock up my flat for Himmel knows who to break in, and my son Isadore 'way out in Ohio and not even here to—to say to his mother good-by. Already with such a smell on this boat and my feelings I got a homesickness I don't wish on my worst enemy. My boy should be left like this in America all alone!"
"Ach, Carrie, for why—"
Of a sudden Mrs. Binswanger's face fell into soft creases, her eyes closed, and cold tears oozed through, zigzagging downward. "My boy out West with—"
"Na, na, Carrie! Don't you worry our Izzy don't take care of hisself better as you. For what his expense accounts are—always a parlor car he has to have—he can take care of hisself twice better as us, mamma. Mamma, you should feel fine now we got started. I wish, mamma, you could see such a card-room and such a dining-room they got up-stairs—gold chairs like you never seen. We should go up on deck, Carrie, and—"