On some such an occasion he learned that Fanny was to be his wife.
"We are not in Russia!" he cried. "I am an American. We are in a free country. What do you mean by choosing for me a girl?"
He got another beating for his defiance. As he lay on his cot one night he made plans how to run away to the West and become a cowboy or something.
Fanny was a beautiful and clever girl. Though Joseph's behavior was very insulting to her, she agreed with the spirit of his revolt.
Of course Joseph was not to be compared with some of the young fellows she knew. There was young Reisin, who played the violin so beautifully; and that long-haired, almond-eyed Berger boy, who had several poems printed in newspapers—all the girls were after him. Joseph had no such qualities. He was not artistic. But she admired his spirit—in an abstract sense. It was so manly of him not to submit to the will of his father. He was an American, lord and master of his own actions, and not a slave or hireling.
Then one day Joseph disappeared from the house. The whole night the police of the Bronx and Manhattan were kept busy trying to find the sixteen-year-old boy. The next day his picture was in all the papers. On the third day he was brought back from Philadelphia, still an unrepentant sinner.
Did he get a beating? No, but on the next day his father took him to the store.
"No more school. You will help serve the customers."
Joseph was strong and willing, and was soon managing the business. But there was no day in which his name was not in some way linked up with Fanny's. For so many years Hirsh Roth had considered the matter of his son's marriage settled, that the unsettling of this plan was a calamity—as if a sure deal for a corner lot had fizzled out, or as if the very Bronx had failed in some way. The more he insisted the more the boy was steeled in his decision. He wouldn't even sit near the girl at table. He never even smiled to her; he snarled.
One day they were alone.