"I wish," he said, low in his throat, and with angry emphasis quivering his lips behind the gray and black bristles of his mustache—"ten times a day I wish I was back in my little house in Newton, where I got my comfort and my peace—you children I got to thank for this, you children."
Mr. Isadore Binswanger replaced his spoon in his soup-plate and leaned back against his chair.
"Aw now, papa, for God's sakes don't begin!"
"You good-for-nothing, you! With your hair combed up straight on your head like a girl's, and a pleated shirt like I'd be ashamed to carry in stock, you got no put-in! If I give you five thousand dollars for a business for yourself you don't care so much what kind of manners I got. Five thousand dollars he asks me for to go in business when he ain't got it in him to keep a job for six months."
"The last job wasn't—"
"Right now in this highway-robbery hotel you got me into, I got to pay your board for you—if you want five thousand dollars from me you got to get rid of me some way, for my insurance policy is all I can say. And sometimes I wish you would—easier for me it would be."
"Julius!"
His son crumpled his napkin and tossed it toward the center of the table. His soft, moist lips were twisted in anger, and his voice, under cover of a whisper, trembled with that same anger.
"For what little board you've paid for me I can't hear about it no more. I'll go out and—"
"'Sh-h-h, Izzy—'sh-h-h, papa, all over the dining-room they can hear you, 'sh-h-h!"