A tear wiggle—waggled down Miss Binswanger's smooth cheek, and she fumbled at her waist-line for her handkerchief.
"I—I—I just wish sometimes I—was dead."
Mr. Binswanger shot his bald head outward suddenly, as a turtle darts forward from its case, and rapped the table noisily with his fist clutched around an upright fork, and his voice climbing to a falsetto.
"I—I wish in my life I had never heard the name of the city."
"Now, Julius, don't begin."
"Ruination it has brought me. My boy won't stay by me in the store so he can't gallivant in the city; my goil won't talk to me no more for madness because we ain't in the city; my wife eats out of me my heart because we ain't in the city. For supper every night when I come home tired from the store all I get served to me is the city. I can't swallow no more! Money you all think I got what grows on trees, just because I give all what I got. You should know how tight—how tight I got to squeeze for it."
Mrs. Binswanger threw her arms apart in a wide gesture of helplessness.
"See, children, just as soon as I say a word, mad like a wet hen he gets and right away puts on a poor mouth."
"Mad yet I shouldn't get with such nonsense. Too good they both got it. Always I told you how we spoilt 'em."
"Don't holler so, pa."