“Yes,” responded the little wife, with a captivated smile, and nodded to her husband.
“We want to get the decentest thing that is cheap,” he said, as the three stood close together in the middle of the room.
The landlady flushed.
“No, no, John,” said the wife, quickly, “don’t you know what we said?” Then, turning to the proprietress, she hurried to add, “We want the cheapest thing that is decent.”
But the landlady had not waited for the correction.
“Dissent! You want somesin dissent!” She moved a step backward on the floor, scoured and smeared with brick-dust, her ire rising visibly at every heart-throb, and pointing her outward-turned open hand energetically downward, added:—
“’Tis yeh!” She breathed hard. “Mais, no; you don’t want somesin dissent. No!” She leaned forward interrogatively: “You want somesin tchip?” She threw both elbows to the one side, cast her spread hands off in the same direction, drew the cheek on that side down into the collar-bone, raised her eyebrows, and pushed her upper lip with her lower, scornfully.
At that moment her ear caught the words of the wife’s apologetic amendment. They gave her fresh wrath and new opportunity. For her new foe was a woman, and a woman trying to speak in defence of the husband against whose arm she clung.
“Ah-h-h!” Her chin went up; her eyes shot lightning; she folded her arms fiercely, and drew herself to her best height; and, as Richling’s eyes shot back in rising indignation, cried:—
“Ziss pless? ’Tis not ze pless! Zis pless—is diss’nt pless! I am diss’nt woman, me! Fo w’at you come in yeh?”