QUAQUARO
Your wife—she's a fine schemer.
JOHN
[Merrily.] Well, this is a brand new household what's jus' had a child born into it. I said to the boss: I'm a newly married man! Then he axed me if my first wife was dead. On the contrary an' not a bit of it, I says. She's alive an' kickin', so that she's jus' given birth to a kickin' young citizen o' Berlin, that's what! When I was travellin' along from Hamburg this mornin' by all the old stations—Hamburg, Stendal, Ultzen—an' got outa the fourth-class coach at the Lehrter station with all my duds, the devil take me if I didn't thank God with a sigh. I guess he didn't hear on account o' the noise o' the trains.
QUAQUARO
Did you hear, Paul, that Mrs. Knobbe's youngest over the way has been taken off again?
JOHN
No. What chance did I have to hear that? But if it's dead, it's a good thing, Emil. When I saw the poor crittur a week ago when it had convulsions an' Selma brought it in an' me an' mother gave it a spoonful o' sugar an' water—well, it was pretty near ready for heaven then.
QUAQUARO
An' you mean to tell me that you didn't hear nothin' o' the circumstances, about the how an' the why o' that child's death?